Hear the full interview
From 36:58 in Monday’s episode of Nick Luck Daily. Press play to start at the interview.
JP McManus and Paul Byrne stole the show at Call of the Card on the eve of the Melbourne Cup, staking around A$1 million on George Boughey’s Hopewell Rock, according to the Racing Post’s Lee Mottershead.
Mottershead, who arrived in Melbourne the day before the Cox Plate, told Charlotte Greenway on Monday’s show that the bets were “light years” ahead of anything else on the night. “I’ve been telling people for a long time, don’t downplay how big a deal JP McManus is,” he said. “Jump racing isn’t massively popular here, so they don’t really know him in the same way we do. But I predicted to people there would be fireworks, and there was a massive explosion.”
How Call of the Card works
Call of the Card is a Cup-eve institution in Melbourne. Four bookmakers sit on a stage and go through the field horse by horse, offering their best price, and punters call out the bets they want. “It went through a bit of a trough a few years ago, and there were doubts it would continue, but it’s been revived,” Mottershead said. “Last year, the fireworks came from JP’s son Kieran. This year, JP himself has come out, and there was an expectation that JP wasn’t going to have five dollars each way on a horse.”
With Byrne doing the talking, they placed a string of bets to win A$2 million, about £1 million, on several runners, including McManus’s own Goodie Two Shoes. They had A$100,000 on Trustyourinstinct at 6-1. “But the big one was Hopewell Rock,” Mottershead said. “In total they staked a million dollars, so about half a million pounds, on Hopewell Rock to win the Cup at odds between 9-1 and 8-1.”
“If you’re laying a horse to lose $2 million, that’s quite a risk.”
Lee Mottershead
Local punters and syndicates were betting in tens of thousands of dollars, he said, but nothing like that. “The four bookmakers on the stage were almost doing deals among themselves to make sure the money was evenly spread,” he said. “If you’re laying a horse to lose $2 million, that’s quite a risk.”
Mottershead’s Melbourne Cup picks
Mottershead admits he has “about a third of the field” running for him, but his main fancy all along has been Trustyourinstinct, who runs in McManus’s colours for Joseph O’Brien. “He was entered in the race last year and didn’t run. I fancied him then, I fancy him now,” he said. He has been drawn 18, just inside his stablemate Goodie Two Shoes in 19. “Wide-drawn runners have a better record in the Melbourne Cup than a lot of people think. On a hold-up horse, it’s sometimes not a bad thing to be wide, away from where they get trouble in running.”
He also likes James J Braddock, another O’Brien runner, and Hopewell Rock. “I think he’s got huge claims,” he said of the Boughey horse. “The way the race is going to be run should suit him. He’s a progressive horse and relatively lightly raced.” Point Of Law, bought by Ciaron Maher from the King and Queen, is the one getting plenty of local attention.
O’Brien has five runners after his leading hope Defiantly was ruled out by the vets, while Maher has a record seven. Mottershead says there has been none of the hostility to the overseas raiders that there used to be. “I think that used to occur in no small part because there was a period when international horses were getting injured, and sometimes worse,” he said. “We’ve had a few years now of completely safe Melbourne Cups, and that’s really helped the way the public view the race.”
The Melbourne Cup is run at Flemington at 3pm local time on Tuesday, which is 4am in the UK. “It really is a race that grabs the attention of a nation in a way I don’t think any other race does,” Mottershead said. “For anyone who hasn’t been out here to experience it, I couldn’t recommend it more highly.”
