Roscommon: Charles Byrnes

No doubt they'll say this plan was made months ago but the timing is very provocative after the Pyromaniac case last week made the stewards and the Turf Club appear toothless.
 
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He had a right plunge foiled last week at Galway after Davy Russel had the horse held up too deep in a slowly run race

These plots must be great if your on but let's be honest they look bloody awful from the outside.
 
In a sport dominated by Mullins, Elliot, Ricci, Giggi, JP among others I think it is refreshing.
How many on here seriously looked at that card this evening for a bet ?
Please answer honestly; i know i gave it a passing glance more for the 3 yer old hurdle than anything else.
Does it damage the image of racing any more than the outsider of AP's two getting up on the shadow of the finishing post at Cork ?
I doubt it very much.
that Charles Byrnes can do this after Gigginstown more or less abandoning him shows his talent.
To get one horse ready for the night is one thing; to do it with three is something else.
 
Custodian of the great Solwhit, and therefore a top man.

'Shrewd trainer lands treble at poorly-contested, summer Jumps meeting'

It's not exactly Watergate, is it?
 
Davy needed to get those home after Sea Light. One thing I have noticed about Byrnes is that he generally doesn't let them off the leash when he has half a stone in hand, they are usually chucked in. Solwhit, Trifolium, Laetitia (remember that one) all were plot horses in the past. These three should all follow up.
 
Tom Doyle fu*cked-up when allowing Solwhit to fly home through the mist, in a handicap at Fairyhouse at the start of the 2008 season. According to the stories going about at the time, this incensed Byrnes, as it allegedly ruined Solwhit's handicap-mark for a planned tilt at the Tote Gold Trophy, and Doyle never rode the horse again. As it happens, the TGT was abandoned in 2009, and the strong likelihood is that Solwhit would have hacked-up regardless if Newbury had gone ahead, from a ridiculously-lenient mark of 141.

Solwhit swerved Cheltenham due to the ground that year, and won the Aintree Hurdle readily from previous Neptune winner Fiveforthree, and the AIG Champion Hurdle from Champion-Hurdler Punjabi, to close out his season.

Still one of my all-time faves.
 
It's stories like this that prevent me from betting on dross midweek fare, and always will. Cap doffed to connections and all but I'm not sure the punters who took early prices about the likes of Russian Roulette (JP owned ironically) will feel so generous.
 
Anyone taking an early price on a JP horse deserves what they get which in this case is likely to be BOG. I think it's safe to say that anyone betting midweek at Roscommon is unlikely to be a betting virgin.
 
Kevin Blake's blog on ATR


On Tuesday morning, the build-up to an otherwise unremarkable National Hunt card at Roscommon erupted into life in a manner that can only be brought about by one thing, an unfolding betting coup.
CHARLES BYRNES, a trainer long considered one of the greatest exponents of the art of relieving bookmakers of their money through the medium of his horses, had three runners on the card and with the odds of all of them being drastically cut by bookmakers from an early stage of the morning, speculation was rife that one of the biggest betting coups of recent years could well be in the offing.
The first horse in the mix was WAR ANTHEM.
A six-year-old gelding, he was officially rated just 60 on the Flat for John Murphy and had shown very little in his two runs over hurdles for Byrnes this season, being beaten a total of 139 lengths.
Some commentators suggested that he was an unusual horse to be the subject of a Byrnes gamble, with him widely known as a trainer that specialises in handicaps, but that is a somewhat outdated view.
With Byrnes’s runners in handicaps tending to be very cautiously priced by the bookmakers from their very first start in handicap company, in more recent times he has seemed much more willing to ready his horses to win maiden hurdles.
One suspects that part of the motivation behind this change in modus operandi is that the bookmakers have shown a willingness to offer generous prices about his horses in such races after they have run poorly in previous starts over hurdles.
Indeed, he has struck with more than a couple of heavily-backed winners of maiden hurdles that had previously shown little in similar contests in the recent past, with examples being Black Warrior, Rosie Alice and Oscar Lantern.
Despite this and the poor quality of the maiden hurdle he was contesting, War Anthem was available at as big as 18/1 and was generally available at 16/1 on Tuesday morning.
The second horse up to the plate was MR SMITH.
A five-year-old son of Galileo that is a full-brother to the high-class middle-distance performer Michelangelo, he hadn’t lived up to his pedigree for John Gosden and was bought by Byrnes for 25,000 gns in October 2014 when officially rated just 63 on the Flat.
He had shown very little in his first six starts over hurdles (including two handicap hurdles) and three outings on the Flat, but was heavily backed for a handicap hurdle at Down Royal last March only to finish a disappointing fifth.
He was given a short break after that and another poor run followed at Killarney in July which led him to Roscommon on Tuesday evening.
Mr Smith was chalked up at as big as 14/1, but 12/1 was the generally available morning price.
The final piece in the Byrnes puzzle was TOP OF THE TOWN.
An eight-year-old son of Craigsteel, he had run well in both handicap and maiden hurdle company in 2015, winning a maiden hurdle at Downpatrick in July.
While he hadn’t troubled the judge in his two starts since returning from an absence of over 10 months in July, he had improved from one start to the next and had caught the eye on the latest of those outings in Tipperary a fortnight ago, raising the possibility that he may be running into form.
Available at as big as 16/1 on Tuesday morning, he was generally priced at 14/1.
So, how did it all pan out?
It is worth noting that there was a notable degree of synchronicity to the gamble in that none of the prices of the three horses moved to any notable degree until 8:10am, at which point all three started to be cut by various bookmakers.
In a perfect world, the prices would have been left untouched until later in the day when bookmakers increase the size of the bets they are willing to lay as the markets become more settled, but in this day and age, keeping such a plan under wraps until 8am on the day of the race is a challenge that most potential gambles fail to achieve.
After the initial moves, the prices of all three horses continued to plunge throughout the morning and into the afternoon, with there reportedly being an abundance of punters that weren’t “in the loop” jumping on the bandwagon having sniffed an unfolding coup.
As has become par for the course on the rare occasions that situations such as this begin to play out, there was some scepticism over how genuine the gamble was.
There no shortage of speculation on social media that it could just have been a case of some punters taking a chance that the horses were fancied, causing a snowball effect in the notoriously volatile morning markets.
A recent example of such a gamble going badly astray was that of the four Sheena West-trained horses that were combined in multiple bets and shortened significantly in the markers last November only for them all to be well beaten.
It may well have been these concerns that led to War Anthem drifting from an opening show of 4/1 to an industry starting price of 6/1 and a Betfair SP of 9.8.
However, the doubts soon disappeared when the runners straightened for home, with War Anthem travelling best and picking up well to win with plenty to spare.
With what would have been viewed by many as the most unlikely winner of the three Byrnes-trained horses based on the form book safely weighed in, the bookmaking industry went into damage limitation mode by applying further cuts to the prices of the remaining two runners.
The damage had already been done though and with Davy Russell keeping his cool in the face of significant pressure and public scrutiny, he steered the two remaining Byrnes runners to similarly straightforward victories at starting prices of 7/4 and 5/4 respectively to land a remarkable treble.
At generally-available morning prices, the treble would have paid out at odds of 3,314/1, while at starting prices a treble would have paid just over 42/1.
The damage had already been done though and with Davy Russell keeping his cool in the face of significant pressure and public scrutiny, he steered the two remaining Byrnes runners to similarly straightforward victories to land a remarkable treble.
The acting stewards inquired into the improvement in form of both War Anthem and Mr Smith in the aftermath of their victories.
As well as a suggestion that his horses had been in better health of late, Byrnes offered multiple reasons that might also have brought about their improvement, including a change of rider and training routine in the case of War Anthem and the application of blinkers and a longer trip for Mr Smith.
While the official handicapper opined that War Anthem had shown “abnormal improvement”, the stewards noted the explanations in both cases and took no further action.
There was no improvement-in-form inquiry held in the case of Top Of The Town.
Of course, betting coups such as this always divide opinion.
On one side, there are those that feel gambles on horses with shaky claims at best based on recent form reflect poorly on the integrity of the sport and disenchant punters who rely on the form book.
This is a perfectly reasonable position to take from a moral standpoint.
On the other side of the fence, there are those that applaud such coups regardless of whether they benefited financially from it.
They admire the planning and execution involved and are delighted to see someone get one over on the old enemy, the bookmakers.
Mind, as reasonable as it may seem for some to be critical of such coups from a moral standpoint, given that horse racing is a fundamentally volatile game in which eyebrows are seldom raised too high when the unexpected happens, one would have thought that a result that was difficult to anticipate based on recent form being preceded by market support would be considered a more desirable scenario than such results occurring to the surprise of everyone?
Charles Byrnes is a trainer for whom it is well known that market moves often reflect his horse’s chance better than the form book, thus the arrival of market support for a horse trained by him that isn’t an obvious winner on form surely adds a crucial piece to the puzzle of finding the winner?
In this case, the market moves on Byrnes’s horses started early enough that the vast majority of punters that had a bet in the races in question would have been in a position to make an informed decision on how to play the markets in light of what was significant new evidence.
Some will have followed the market and got involved in the gamble themselves, while others will have made adjustments to their previous calculations in how they played the race.
Whether one likes it or not, the betting market is a crucial part of the overall puzzle of finding a winner and it could readily be argued that those that choose to ignore such seemingly significant market moves prior to having a bet have no one to blame but themselves if it doesn’t work out for them.
Whatever one’s opinion of the rights or wrongs of this and other similar gambles down the years, such feats demand appreciation of what is a truly incredible feat of horse training, planning and execution.
While “landing a touch” may seem like a relatively simple task to an outsider looking in, those with insights into the practicalities and realities of such things know just how difficult it is to get everything right with a horse to have real confidence in its chance on any particular day.
If it was easy, lucrative gambles would be landed every day, but the reality is that they are very rare.
Thus, for a trainer to deliver three modest horses to a single race meeting in peak form in races they are confidently expected to win and duly get the job done is a truly mind-blowing achievement.
Barney Curley famously saddled three winners from four gambled horses on a single day in Great Britain in 2010 and did the unthinkable by going for a very similar gamble in 2014 that resulted in all four horses winning, but Byrnes’s coup is arguably just as if not more impressive.
Low-level Irish racing is more competitive than low-level British racing and even more significantly, the comparatively small size of the Irish racing programme book would make it a serious challenge to find three suitable races for three individual horses on any given day to pull off a coup such as this.
The only comparable successful gamble in recent times in Ireland was the treble landed by trainer Michael O’Hare at Naas in November 2009.
For many, the biggest question will be “how much did they make?” Given how famously tight lipped Charles Byrnes is, the number involved is unlikely to ever be made public.
However, the aforementioned exploits of Barney Curley in recent years may give a hint.
When Curley went for his famous four-timer in 2010 that yielded three winners, he reportedly won the better part of £4m, but would have won a truly remarkable £20m had the fourth horse got the job done.
Curley made no mistake when attempting a similar coup in January 2014, with all four horses winning.
However, the early-warning systems that the bookmakers had put in place in the aftermath of his 2010 coup coupled with the significantly increased punter-to-punter communication via social media platforms such as Twitter resulted in Curley’s team reportedly getting far less money on the four horses before speculation began to spread of a coup being afoot, with many bookmakers refusing to take any further bets from an early part of the morning of the races.
Thus, despite the remarkable four-timer being landed, the pay-out was thought to be notably less than the £4m windfall achieved in 2010.
Those same early-warning systems are still very much in place and bookmakers have become even more risk averse in their business practices in the two-and-a-half years that have passed since Curley’s second four-timer coup.
Even with the combined generally-available morning odds of the three horses in question being 3,314/1, early indications from the betting industry suggest that Byrnes’s pay-out is more likely to be in the high six figures rather than seven figures.
While that may seem a small number compared to those mentioned for the Curley coups, many in the betting industry will have been of the view that prospects of a significant six-figure sum ever being won in a multiple bet gamble such as this were largely gone, making what Byrnes achieved at Roscommon all the more noteworthy.
Whatever side of the fence one sits on in this debate, one thing that the majority are likely to agree on is that it would be a serious problem for the image of horse racing if gambles such as this succeeded on a regular basis.
The difficulty of achieving such a feat means that they are rarely attempted, never mind landed, and as long as they remain rare, it could be readily argued that the possibility of them occurring adds a level of intrigue and devilment to horse racing that is very much a part of its unique appeal unique appeal.
Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any other circumstance where a mid-week meeting at Roscommon would be propelled into international headlines as it has been in the aftermath of this betting coup.
That said, this doesn’t mean that the authorities shouldn’t be doing everything they can to uphold the integrity of the sport and ensure that any blatant cheating by betting coup conspirators is stamped out.
While it is just as, if not more common, for gambles to be landed in British racing as it is in Irish racing, the public response to the Byrnes coup in the tone of “typical crooked Irish racing” confirms that Irish racing and particularly Irish National Hunt racing has an image problem that only the Turf Club are in a position to address.
With a view to this, the results of their recent review of their integrity policies are eagerly anticipated.
One thing for sure is that in this modern age of risk-averse bookmakers that do everything in their power to prevent ordinary punters from having a fair crack at winning, there is unlikely to be too much public sympathy for bookmakers that were hit by this gamble.
 
"If it was easy, lucrative gambles would be landed every day, but the reality is that they are very rare.
Thus, for a trainer to deliver three modest horses to a single race meeting in peak form in races they are confidently expected to win and duly get the job done is a truly mind-blowing achievement."

Can't agree with any of this.

The reason plots like this are rare, is because few trainers have the inclination, and even fewer have the horses, even if they did have the inclination.

Modest horses at modest meetings, are the same thing as good horses at good meetings. Paul Nicholls lands a treble most Saturday's, but it never registers as a "truly mind-blowing achievement".

KB is in danger of turning into the Irish version of Alastair Down, if he is not careful.
 
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A decent breakdown of events by Kevin Blake for those of us who missed this yesterday.
A good punt was landed.
 
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