Article by Greg Wood in The Guardian
Two of racing's most durable characters have confirmed their retirement from long-standing roles over the last seven days, with varying degrees of dignity.
John McCririck's decision to sue Channel 4 and its production company for "ageism" when it decided not to renew his freelance contract guarantees that he will never work for the company again. It also prompted several excruciating media outings, full of McCririck's normal, boorish sexism, which attempted to push his side of the argument but left him wide open to accusations of hypocrisy.
It is a good deal more difficult to accuse others of prejudice when it has been one of one's own defining characteristics for the last 30 years. But it is also a sad way to conclude what has, at times, been a garlanded career. In his time as a reporter on the Sporting Life, McCririck had a keen nose for a story and a determination to get it into print. His grotesque public image had long since taken over but there was once a decent journalist somewhere underneath the bluster and bling.
Barney Curley went more quietly. His Newmarket stable is now almost empty, he will not renew his licence when it expires at the end of this month and he will depart instead for Zambia, where Direct Aid for Africa, the charity which Curley founded in the mid-1990s, works with children orphaned by Aids.
Curley, like McCririck, has been a colourful and controversial figure in racing for many decades.
Again like McCririck, Curley has tried at times to style himself as a tribune of the punters but for every backer who admires his extraordinary gambles over the years there is another who will vent frustration that any race with a Curley-trained runner was a "no-bet" race since it was impossible to be sure whether the trainer fancied it and, therefore, whether everything else was probably running for second place.
A personal view would be that both men were products of a different time and, as a result, hard to judge by modern standards. McCririck rose to fame when there were just a few television channels and a little eccentricity and colour in a monochrome world was enough to get one noticed.
Curley, meanwhile, operated to maximum effect at a time when racing in general, and National Hunt racing in particular, was a different world. Races were often won not by the best horse but the least unfit and the rules were so loose that they all but begged to be exploited.
Jockeys, for instance, did not need to be declared overnight and could be switched almost at will. On one occasion, when nothing illegal took place, Curley legged a 7lb-claimer into the saddle and watched as the horse headed off to the start – then went to the betting ring and got his money down, whereupon Declan Murphy, his top stable jockey, slipped under the running rail, took over in the saddle and the pair proceeded to win as they pleased.
Curley's final coup, worth £4m, involved four horses, three of which were winners. Had the other one gone in, it would have been worth an estimated £20m and thus the biggest win in turf history. But it took nearly two years to squeeze the money out of some offshore bookmakers, another sign of the changing times.
The famous Yellow Sam coup, which relied on an accomplice occupying the only phone line into Bellewstown to stop the bookies sending money to the track, is just one exploit that would not be possible now.
Modern racing would not offer the same opportunities for a younger version of Curley starting out in the game. The form, for sure, is a little more reliable but a little of the colour has been bleached away too.