For a man who is still most familiar to many fans as the most fearless gambler of recent decades, JP McManus does not seem to be leaving a great deal to chance before Saturday’s Grand National at Aintree.
Three of the top six in the betting for the world’s most famous steeplechase – Iroko, Perceval Legallois and last year’s winner, I Am Maximus – will carry the owner’s famous green and gold colours this weekend, along with a live each-way shot in Meetingofthewaters. The Sundance Kid – as he was nicknamed in Ireland’s betting rings in the 1970s – is now in his mid-70s, but he shows no sign of slowing down.
Quite the opposite, in fact. He went into last month’s Cheltenham festival as the meeting’s all-time leading owner with 78 wins over the course of 43 years since Mister Donovan gave him his first festival winner in 1982. Over the course of just four days, he added six more, including a second Gold Cup victory with Inothewayurthinkin.
The nature of the competition in National Hunt racing has changed considerably since McManus bought his first horse in 1977. Owners including the Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary, the former banker Rich Ricci and the construction magnate Brian Acheson have brought serious spending power to what was once a less money-driven cousin to the serious business on the Flat.
But the ex-bookie and punter from Limerick, who laid his first bet at his local greyhound track, has more than held his own. More than 200 individual horses have carried his colours – adopted in honour of his local Gaelic Athletic Association club – in the current season, and a piece of racing history is within sight at the weekend, too.
McManus is already one of just six owners – including O’Leary, Trevor Hemmings and, interestingly, the legendary Victorian owner-gambler James Machell – to have won the Grand National three times. Victory for any of his runners on Saturday would give him the outright record, in the race that most owners want to win above all others.
His three winners to date have all been memorable in their way. Don’t Push It, in 2010, finally gave Tony McCoy a victory at the 15th attempt, while Minella Times in 2021 was more significant still, as Rachael Blackmore became the first female jockey to ride the winner. I Am Maximus, meanwhile, was the springboard for Willie Mullins, his trainer, to become the first Irish-based winner of the British jump trainers’ championship for 70 years.
All three had different trainers, and it is sign of how widely McManus has always spread his horses that two more – Gavin Cromwell, who saddles Perceval Legallois, and the British yard of Oliver Greenall and Josh Guerriero, who train Iroko – will hope to join the list on Saturday. Chantry House, a 100-1 outsider, is his other runner.
More than 60 trainers, in fact, have saddled a runner in green and gold this season, including about 20 British stables. While many owners focus their investment on a handful of trainers, McManus’s training fees feed the grassroots as well.
Frank Berry, an ex-jockey who has been McManus’s racing manager for as long as anyone can remember, is in no doubt about which of the team’s horses he would ride at Aintree if he had the chance.
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“It’s hard to get away from Maximus, he’s the class horse in the race. We’ve often had numbers there all right, but they didn’t figure at the right end [of the market],” Berry said on Wednesday. “We’ve a good team going this year and they’re all in good form.”
Any one of Iroko, I Am Maximus or Perceval Legallois could set off as the favourite on Saturday afternoon, but if one of the trio does indeed emerge from the pack to head the market, it is unlikely to be McManus’s money that puts him there.
The great gambler’s tilts at the ring have largely been consigned to history, along with the handful of much-missed figures in the bookmaking jungle who were more than willing to take him on. The ebb and flow of his six-figure jousting with “Fearless” Freddie Williams at Cheltenham around the turn of the century became the stuff of festival legend, including the day when McManus relieved his bookie of nearly £1m with a £100k bet on a winning favourite at 6-1 and £2k each-way on a successful 50-1 shot in the Pertemps Final.
Perhaps the business of amassing a $2bn fortune through Forex trading and property investments has also removed the need to have a bet on his horses. Racing history, meanwhile, is another way to measure success, though Berry suggests it is the last thing on the owner’s mind.
“Not at all,” he says, when asked if a fourth National winner would be a special moment for McManus. “He enjoys the horses running in the big races and all races, and having a winner anywhere around the country.”