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The cautionary tale of Barrio the racehorse

Back in 2008, Off The Ball Football Show and Irish Independent football writer Dan McDonnel...



The cautionary tale of Barrio...
Golf

The cautionary tale of Barrio the racehorse

Back in 2008, Off The Ball Football Show and Irish Independent football writer Dan McDonnell and Johnny Ward of the Racing Post bought a horse called Barrio.

Although it was a decision that made sense at the time, not everything went to plan as the duo revealed when they recounted the tale to Joe Molloy on Off The Ball tonight.

"When we bought the horse, we paid €25K for him. There were six of us all together," Ward explained.

"This horse had never run. You can get a horse off the flat, who runs over maybe a mile and a half whose moderately talented. You're pretty sure he's going to win hurdle races. You'll get him for 6 or 7 grand. So we'd bought Houdini who had never run and he turned out to be great. But more likely, you're going to get somebody whose moderately talented or not talented at all. And the bottom line is 80 per cent of the money that you spend is going to go to waste in horse racing. You'll accrue 20 per cent back in prize money on average."

The lads soon realized that the horse "couldn't move" which is not ideal when it comes to racing and there was no real improvement as Dan and Johnny explained.

Listen to the full tale via the podcast.

 

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