JP McManus is 67 today. Birthday presents are mostly superfluous when you can count your money in billions although the queue to provide them is still usually lengthy.
The legendary businessman, gambler and racehorse owner remains a largely inscrutable public figure. But it is safe to assume the Cheltenham festival is the gift that keeps on giving to the man who has everything.
It’s 40 years since McManus had his first runner at National Hunt racing’s greatest meeting. Even then the impact of his exploits in the betting ring meant he was known as the ‘The Sundance Kid’. Jack Of Trumps carried the green and gold colours of Limerick’s South Liberties GAA club and was widely expected to win. He started odds-on and fell.
Instead ‘The Kid’ had to wait four years for Mister Donovan to give him a first festival winner. McManus reportedly won more than £250,000 in bets on that single race. Such a heady mix of success and bookie-bashing contributed to a cavalier image which even then was at odds with the reserved habits of someone instinctively distrustful of attention.
If all his horses disappeared it would be catastrophic for a great number of people
The perennial champion jockey AP McCoy was McManus’s rider for a decade until retiring in 2015. He likes to recount one of the first pieces of advice he got from his former boss: ‘Imagine all the fish who’d still be alive if they’d learned to keep their mouth shut’.
As he moves around Cheltenham next week, often with an eager school of friends and associates in his wake, there won’t be a betting-ring rumour about McManus and his horses that someone somewhere won’t want to believe. Eyes will invariably be drawn towards this otherwise unremarkable-looking figure who has continued to fascinate the public.
Having started working life driving a bulldozer for his father’s earth-moving business, through betting and bookmaking, to now being based in Geneva, a friend of the rich and powerful everywhere, he is both a household name and resolutely enigmatic, someone for whom privacy might just be the greatest gift of all.
Some attention is okay of course. Any that comes from benevolent fund distribution to the disadvantaged, or hundreds of jobs generated from his €50 million redevelopment of Adare Manor Golf Club in Co Limerick, is one thing. Even tightly controlled glimpses into his huge Martinstown home near Kilmallock have occasionally been permitted.
But in terms of the personal or political, the great gambler barely, if ever, gives a tell.
For instance, it is understood McManus believes Irish racing’s recent switch of television rights to a subscription channel model for next year might smack of elitism. He was “saddened to learn of the development”. His rival, the Ryanair boss, Michael O’Leary, was characteristically a lot more colourful on the same topic. However, it was McManus’s words that reverberated through racing.
Stalwart client
Money may shout but real money only has to whisper and McManus’s influence in Irish racing is such he barely needs open his mouth.
The story also illustrated part of the McManus paradox. A billionaire, tax-exile racehorse magnate with a private jet complaining of elitism sounds absurd. Yet lots of betting shop punters seem to identify with him. Even outside of racing there is an indulgent perception of McManus that doesn't seem to apply to his close friends and business partners, Dermot Desmond or John Magnier.
Maybe it’s the bulldozer-betting-bookmaking back story, the philanthropy, or the love of all things GAA. It might be the sheer ordinariness of how he looks: if the suit is Armani, McManus can still make it look like he’s going to a country christening. Magnier’s public utterances are similarly Trappist but the Coolmore boss cuts a much more exotic-looking figure.
The two men are different, too, in that McManus’s racing passion is for jumps. One trainer estimates McManus has over 500 horses in training in Ireland and another 500 either out of training, getting pre-trained or simply retired. He also has am extensive numbers of horses in Britain. Another trainer states that without McManus’s support he simply wouldn’t be in business. He isn’t alone.
“If all his horses disappeared it would be catastrophic for a great number of people,” says the man who trained Jack Of Trumps four decades ago, Edward O’Grady.
Even in 1978 O’Grady suspected the ‘Sundance Kid’ tag, and its wild evocation, was off the mark. “Measured” was his first impression of McManus. What impresses O’Grady is that despite decades of stratospheric wealth, and the flattery which invariably accompanies it, his stalwart client still seems the same.
“To me he’s never changed. He was always someone with a taste for what is best. Even back then he never let his tummy know how his pocket was feeling. But it’s the same with people, bloodstock, jockeys; I think his associations confirm that.
“He must be measured or he wouldn’t be as successful as he is. He has a saying – the clever man knows the answers but the genius never gets asked the questions. I think that covers a multitude,” O’Grady adds.
Others suggest McManus’s public reticence reflects a natural reserve.
“I don’t know if you’d call him cautious but he does keep his cards close to his chest. He’s very quiet, won’t use 10 words when one will do. I’ve noticed he would much rather listen to you, and what you have to say, than try to tell you anything. He can be a bit restricted that way,” says the trainer and former top jockey, Conor O’Dwyer.
Biggest spender
“What he is is very loyal. To enjoy racing for any length of time you have to be a good loser. And JP is as good a loser as he is a winner. As long as I’m in the game there aren’t many that way,” O’Dwyer adds.
So many livelihoods are tied up in McManus’s investment that most on-the-record comment rarely strays from flattery. What’s noticeable is how off-the-record dissent is relatively rare too.
“If he could do you a turn, it wouldn’t be a bad one,” says one racing figure, although his reluctance to be named reflects a general inclination to tip-toe around jump racing’s biggest spender.
A portrait of a reserved down-to- earth family man, loyal to those he knows and trusts, fiercely proud of where he comes from, and prone to homespun mottos is widely painted. Not surprisingly for someone worth between two and four billion Euro – depending on the estimate or guess you choose – he has his detractors too, often in reference to his tax residence status in Switzerland.
That status cost him last year when losing a US legal action to recover $5.2 million in tax withheld from $17.4 million worth of winnings on a three-day backgammon match in California in 2012. McManus claimed he was exempt from American income tax under the US-Ireland double taxation treaty. The US government argued that as a tax resident of Switzerland he could not benefit from the 1997 treaty.
He has said in the past it is not his ambition to die a wealthy man, a statement made nevertheless in his €150 million Martinstown mansion in Co Limerick. That’s just one of a number of valuable properties in the McManus portfolio that run from the Ailesbury Road in Dublin, to London, Geneva, Barbados and others elsewhere.
A determination to appear down to earth sits uncomfortably next to some spectacular spending since McManus joined the ranks of the super-rich. Whether tales of his ties to the English currency trader, Joe Lewis, and a supposed killing on short-selling the Mexican Peso over 20 years ago, are apocryphal or not, sometime in the mid-1990s the Irishman's fortunes moved from flush to opulent.
McManus’s business is now generally referred to as currency trading but the range of his interests is wide. His reputation for clinical ruthlessness in those businesses is far removed from the homely racecourse image.
When the former Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson wrangled with his Old Trafford shareholders, McManus and Magnier, over ownership of the racehorse Rock Of Gibraltar 15 years ago, he did so against plenty of advice that he was in well over his head against the Irish pair. Despite extensive business interests, though, it is racing which still commands much of McManus's passion.
“He’s as interested in his Monday horses as his Saturday ones. He has an extraordinary appetite for his horses. He wants them to be competitive, at whatever level they compete. If anything I’d say that appetite’s got healthier over the years!” O’Grady says.
Prostate cancer
The former champion jockey Christy Roche retired and passed the training responsibility to his son Pádraig at the start of this year. Typically, McManus kept his horses in the Roche yard. His habit of buying horses but leaving them with the same trainer is regularly pointed out as a major plus point of how he operates.
“He is very hands on with his horses, all of them, although he wouldn’t be a fella to tell you ‘do this or do that’. But it’s unbelievable, the way he gets the time, and how knowledgeable he is about his horses,” Roche says, pointing to the unremarkable hurdler, Out Of The Loop, as an example.
A lot of good came out of the cancer, you see things in a different light
“He ran at Down Royal in November and I was disappointed with him. But JP was ‘no, I like him’. Sure enough he won in Fairyhouse a month later and the handicapper put him up 8lbs. Then JP says ‘Christy, if we give this horse a long break, I think he can improve more than 8lbs’. So he gets the break (84 days) and comes out and wins in Fairyhouse the other day.
“I’ve known JP a long time and he’s still exactly the same. So steady. He rings for a chat and you could talk for an hour and not even mention horses. He can talk about everything. I know if I’d listened to him more I’d have been a better man. He told me recently ‘every day I wake up now Christy, I want to enjoy every day’. He seems very happy with everything,” Roche adds.
In 2009 McManus revealed he’d been given the all-clear after being diagnosed with prostate cancer and in a rare personal glimpse added: “A lot of good came out of the cancer. You see things in a different light. I got more out of it than I lost and there was never a day I thought I wouldn’t make it.”
Since then his racing interests have only seemed to increase. What motivates his in-depth involvement in the sport fascinates many. The idea of a billionaire getting his buzz from beating the bookies seems silly, although McManus admits to still liking a bet, including on his shock 33-1 Irish Gold Cup winner, Edwulf, last month.
Plenty within racing would view that admission as proof that some old habits are a long way from dead. Others, however, insist it is the opportunity to share this racing fascination with his family that’s the real buzz.
It hasn’t all been plain-sailing. His home-bred star Synchronised was killed in the 2012 Grand National just weeks after winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup. In 2016 McManus successfully appealed a 60-day ban imposed on his horse, Noble Emperor, in a high profile ‘running and riding’ case that saw jockey, Barry Geraghty, also win an appeal against a 30-day suspension for his ride.
The headlines generated by that case would have been anathema to someone who prefers his publicity either positive or non-existent.
The latter is impossible at Cheltenham and the balance of McManus’s festival fortunes have been overwhelmingly positive over the years. There have been 51 more victories since Mister Donovan. He could have up to 50 runners next week, including the overwhelming Champion Hurdle favourite, Buveur D’Air.
And should the horse win his owner will be centre stage, smiling, talking about magic moments, and most likely trying to shift attention elsewhere.
