Cathal BarryBookies’ nemesis Barney Curley speaks to Cathal Barry about how his faith inspired his philanthropy
They say the house always wins but Barney Curley begs to differ. He’s is one of those rare jack of all trades that ends up mastering a few along the way.
The one time Jesuit seminarian turned horse trainer and professional gambler now finds himself receiving a parliamentary award for his philanthropy.
Barney was presented with the Oireachtas Human Dignity Group’s 2015 Human Life, Human Rights and Human Dignity Award at a ceremony in Leinster House last week in recognition of his work with Direct Aid for Africa (DAFA), a charity he co-founded in 1997.
Curley is a colourful character, perhaps best known for orchestrating the infamous Yellow Sam betting coup which cleaned out the bookies in 1975.
He was heralded as a genius this time around, however, for his work in Africa, transforming countless lives for the better.
Efforts
Thanks to his efforts, over €5.75 million has been spent on schools and hospitals, mainly in Zambia.
Even after receiving his award though, Barney “still can’t quite figure out” how he ended up winning it.
“I don’t really deserve this because I consider it a privilege at my stage in life to be able to do what I do. I think God has granted me a great privilege late on in life,” he told The Irish Catholic.
Barney now plans to present his award to his “heroes”, the Dominican sisters in Zambia.
“I’m going to take that award to Zambia and bring it to the Dominican convent there. It’s really them that deserve it.
“They are my heroes. The care that they give to people out there is incredible,” he said.
Barney’s Catholic faith is “everything” to him. “My faith means everything to me. It’s very important to have God in your life.”
The daily massgoer’s faith was inspired by his parents. “My parents set a great example. They went to Mass every day until they were not able to go anymore. That had a big influence on my life and I try to go to daily Mass too,” he said.
Barney’s decision to invest his efforts charitably into Africa dates back to a conversation he had with Fr Eugene O’Reilly, a Kiltegan missionary in Zambia, soon after the tragic death of his son Charlie, who died in a car accident in 1995.
Fr O’Reilly “fascinated” Barney. “He had a little case with a change of shirt and trousers and that was about it but he was so happy,” he said.
The “peace of mind” the priest had despite owning so little materially made the professional gambler question his own outlook on life.
“I thought to myself there has to be some other way. I had all the toys – big houses, big cars, big ego, but there was just something missing.”
He decided to make the trip to Zambia to see things for himself and was inspired to set up DAFA after seeing first-hand the poverty people were living in there. The rest is history.
Barney returned from Kavu in rural Zambia where he has recently opened a new hospital, run by the Dominican sisters, to receive the honour from the Oireachtas Human Dignity Group.
The group was established to promote discussion in Leinster House about the importance of respecting human dignity at all stages of life.
Membership is informal, and the group’s activities are open to all members of the Oireachtas and MEPs who share its aims and are interested in participating.
Curley is only the second recipient of the honour. Last year’s inaugural award was presented to Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, founder of Mary’s Meals.
As previously mentioned, Barney rose to prominence after pulling off one of Ireland’s most famous betting coups in 1975.
In the weeks leading up to the National Hunt race at the small Co. Meath track at Bellewstown in June of that year, the betting mastermind devised an elaborate scheme in which he wisely backed a highly unfancied racehorse he owned named Yellow Sam.
He spent weeks plotting and planning, and by race day had an army of ‘layers’ spread throughout the country, each poised to place a bet of anything between £50 and £300 in hundreds of off-course bookies shops 15 minutes before the 3pm race start. In all, he was going to bet in excess of £15,000, virtually his entire savings.
Gamble
The most important factor in the gamble was to ensure that Yellow Sam started at 20/1 or better. The issue Barney had to overcome was that once the off-course bookies realised money was piling on the horse, they’d inform course bookies to lay off their liabilities, inevitably causing Yellow Sam’s starting price to plummet.
But Barney had handpicked Bellewstown for one specific reason – there was only one public telephone at the track. He had close friend, Benny O’Hanlon, pretend he needed to contact a dying aunt, which persuaded others to allow him to use the phone for the half hour in the lead up to the race until just after the horses were off.
In the end, Yellow Sam successfully negotiated the 13 hurdles and won easily by two-and-a-half lengths. In all, Barney collected about £300,000, a significant sum of money at that time, while some believe that his take was considerably more.
Barney insists there was nothing illegal or immoral about what he did, arguing that he simply outwitted the system and took advantage of unique circumstances.
Curley courted controversy again in 1984, when he decided to sell his Co. Westmeath mansion, Middleton House, by way of a raffle.
The tickets were priced £200 each and a proportion of the sum raised was to go to the local GAA club. As far as Barney was concerned, there was nothing illegal in what he was doing.
After expenses, he ended up netting £1 million for the house, which was sold almost a decade later for just £300,000 at auction.
Barney went on to win a trainer’s licence in 1986 and kept a small stable of his own horses and trained them to win specific races, on which he would gamble heavily.
He calculated he needed to make £400,000 a year from these bets just to keep the operation afloat, and says that there has never been a single year in which he ended up in the red from his gambling.
More recently, in 2010, despite the far more sophisticated systems of modern bookmakers, Curley attempted emulate his feats of 1975 and succeeded once again.
That particular coup, involving four horses, three trained by him and one that he had previously owned, reportedly netted him millions.
More recently still Barney has admitted his connection to the four-horse coup that cost bookmakers an estimated £2million sterling in January of last year.
Curley is well aware that money can’t buy him happiness though.
“Someday we’ll meet God and I believe he knows all our faults,” Barney said, adding that he maintains humanity will be judged on those powerful words from Matthew’s Gospel: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”
“If we can pass that exam I think we will be okay,” he said.
This reporter isn’t a betting man, but if he was to fancy a flutter, he reckons Barney Curley will be okay in the end.