Many of you will have a bet on a horse race over Christmas.

You don’t have to be out in the cold at Limerick, Leopardstown or Down Royal. You might just stumble upon RTÉ coverage and decide to have a little wager, or you could be sat on the couch, finishing off the Quality Street, when someone sends you a tip via text.

This yoke is supposed to win today. It was 20/1 last night. Now it’s favourite.Landing a gamble has always been part of Irish racing’s mystique and allure.

It’s not easy to pull it off, so there is generally credit given when a small trainer or owner gets one over on the bookies. And we all like to be in on it as well. The bragging rights are immense.

In the past few years, Co Armagh trainer Ronan NcNally has established a reputation for being an expert at preparing his horses for a specific target. Let me be clear from the outset – there is no evidence to suggest McNally actually bets himself.

But it is a fact that most of his winners are heavily backed and when they are big prices they simply do not win.

Dreal Deal

The most obvious case involves a horse named Dreal Deal. He was never placed in his first 11 races, always starting at big prices. Then in June 2020 he was backed from 20/1 to 6/4 and won easily.

The official handicapper reported to the stewards the horse had shown improvement “in excess of two stone”.

McNally has also won plenty of races in Britain, again with heavily backed horses, sometimes leading to questions from the stewards there and complaints from punters who felt this wasn’t fair play.

In fact, so good has McNally been at winning races when the money is down that the stewards decided shortly after that Navan race to launch an investigation into his operation.

It took two years before the case was heard, and last week McNally was found guilty of serious racing offences.

Penalties won’t be handed down until the new year but it seems likely McNally will lose his licence for a period.

Integrity of horseracing

He has been convicted of “training and running horses in a manner which is prejudicial to the integrity, proper conduct and good reputation of horseracing” and to have “caused serious damage to the interests of horseracing in Ireland.”

McNally says he will almost certainly appeal any punishments.

We haven’t yet been given full details of the evidence presented against McNally but it appears the prosecution’s case consisted of identifying patterns in the way he campaigned his horses and linking these to betting patterns, in particular to bets placed by people linked to the trainer.

So, does this mark the end of the traditional ‘give a horse a few quiet runs and then land a gamble’ ploy? I don’t think so, but the lesson for owners and trainers is not to make it so obvious that Irish racing looks like a rigged roulette wheel.