Sligo’s ‘Honest Joe’ renews faith in bookies
Trip to Irish meeting pays off for punter – even after leaving without his winnings
These days bookmakers are all well-regulated squeaky-clean pillars of society who look after the old and the needy and those less lucky in life. They sponsor races, pay trainers and jockeys who would otherwise be on the breadline to write blogs and are all-round good eggs.
For all that, though, they are still the old enemy and the image of a weasel in a trilby trading as “Honest Joe” in the betting ring is a hard one to shake off. But there comes a heart-warming story from Ireland which can only restore one’s faith in the profession.
Jeremy Dougall, a long-time jumping enthusiast and one of Oliver Sherwood’s longest-standing owners – his first share in a horse, Night Session, was in 1986, though he is currently between horses – decided to take himself off to Sligo for its two-day meeting in August, having never been before.
The town, where the poet (rather than the multiple Ascot Gold Cup winner) Yeats lived, straddles the Garavogue river and the course is set against the backdrop of Benbulben, an impressive block of rock which must be Ireland’s nearest equivalent to Cape Town’s Table Mountain. It is a right-handed, dual-purpose racecourse where less is more, so they race eight times a year, mainly in summer.
Dougall stayed at the Clayton Hotel, attended both days’ racing in the beautiful setting and backed several winners, the last of which was a €30 (£27) win bet on a 5-1 shot.
With the benefit of hindsight, he regards it as both unprofessional and a possible “sign of old age”, but for the first time during the course of a betting career spanning 50 years, he committed what he regards is one of the punter’s cardinal sins; leaving the racecourse without collecting his winnings.
When he returned to his hotel, he was packing up his suitcase and going through his pockets when the betting slip, from a bookie called Mcgarrity, came to light. But as the slip had no contact details, not even an email address or phone number, there was little he could do about it.
On his return home, however, he put in a call to the racecourse on the off chance. They put him on to Horse Racing Ireland and first thing the next morning he received a phone call from an Irish number.
“You don’t know who I am but I’m Mr Mcgarrity,” said the voice. “If you give me your bank details, I’ll put €180 in your account.” True to his word, the following morning it was there.
“It’s nice to have one’s faith reaffirmed, and a pleasant surprise to be recompensed quite so quickly,” said Dougall. “It is also evidence that I actually backed a winner at Sligo – without it, no one would have believed me!”
Farewell to popular starter
One of racing’s unsung heroes, the popular starter Mervyn Smith, has died aged 73. A countryman through and through, he had worked for the British Horseracing Authority since 1992 in a variety of guises before retiring at the end of the 2014-15 jump season.
Highly respected by the jockeys, because he took time to explain what he required from them, he was originally from a farming background and lived in Birdlip, near Gloucester, where Grand National-winning jockey Jason Maguire was a neighbour and great friend.
“I think I was the only jockey whose name he knew,” joked Maguire. “When he was starting us he’d shout at me – whether I was at the front or the back!”
Whenever he offered advice, he invariably followed it with: “I’ll tell you that for free.” It became such a catchphrase that his fellow officials used to run a spread on how long it would be before he uttered it.