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LEGENDARY BOOKIE-BASHER Barney Curley has admitted his connection to the four-horse coup that cost bookmakers an estimated £2million in January.
Former trainer Curley was thought to be involved in the coup involving Eye Of The Tiger, Seven Summits, Indus Valley and Low Key, some of which were formerly trained by the now infamous gambler, but Curley admitted his involvement at a recent Cheltenham preview night and said that the backing of some influential racing figures will see him ‘die happy enough’.
“This is from the bottom of my heart. I am serious about this – I don’t want to talk about it,” Curley said.
“I have a reason for saying that because it’s a distraction from what I’m trying to do (his charity work with Direct Aid For Africa). It’s over now, we’ve done it — it was very satisfying. Let’s hope it does a bit of good.
“I’m a retired racehorse trainer. I’m not really a retired owner though — I have a few young horses. It was very tough but I got two letters which I kept – that satisfies me,” he said.
“One was from Ian Balding, who probably was one of the greatest sportsmen in England in this last 30 or 40 years. That’d be Clare and Andrew Balding’s father.
“It was a great privilege to get a letter from him because he knows all about the horses.
“The other was a letter that arrived through the post one day. There was a photograph of me on the front of the paper and these people had cut off the photograph and stuck it on the front of this letter and it read Barney Curley Genius, Newmarket, England.
“I was going to throw it in the bin because all those things are rubbish, but I looked and there was a first class stamp on it.
“It was probably from one of the greatest training organisations of the last 40 or 50 years. One side was signed, Martin Pipe, and the other was signed David Pipe, on a postcard. So I’ll die happy enough with that.”
