Gamble looks a winner

Press, 21 January 1984, Page 8

Gamble looks a winner

NZPA-AP Dublin For a millionaire gambler, Barney Curley, the biggest risk of his life looks as if it is about to pay off — the raffle of his $U52.25 million Georgian mansion outside the Irish village of Castletown Geoghegan. If there had been only one taker, Mr Curley’s 140-year-old Middleton Park house, set in 136 ha with stabling for 37 horses, would have gone for SUS27O, the price of a single ticket in the raffle. But with less than two weeks to go before the closing date on January 31, Mr Curley’s wife, Maureen, reports that 8000 tickets have already been sold, more than half of them to Americans — ?U52.2 million.

Mr Curley, aged 44, on his

second recent trip to New York, is confident of a rush of late orders for another 1000 tickets before the deadline. The draw, to be conducted by an Irish racing broadcaster, Michael O’Hehir, is scheduled for February 7 at the mansion. “Sure it was a gamble, and I could have lost a lot of money,” Mr Curley said. “But as things are working out, I should be okay. And a gamble is something I find hard to resist.”

Mr Curley, a professional gambler who has made it big at race-tracks across the Irish Republic and Britain, decided in July to move to a new home more suitable for his latest ambition — to train racehorses;

Fearing that with the economic recession in Ireland he would not get the

real estate agents’ valuation price, Mr Curley decided on the raffle.

It has been months of hard promotion work, with attractive brochures and a video film of Mr Curley, his wife and three children and their mansion in County Westmeath.

Britain’s Independent Television Network ran part of the film. In November, Mr Curley took it to the United States, where he toured race-tracks, gambling and selling tickets at big cities. “The odds are better than you get on the Pools or any lottery — and it’s a bigger prize than for any sporting event in the world,” he said. The brochure described Mr Curley — a grocer’s son and former seminarian — as “an internationally

known racehorse owner and sporting gentleman.” More modestly, Mr Curley said: “I’m a professional gambler.” Mr Curley sent the first of many shudders through bookmaking establishments when a long-shot called Yellow Sam romped home at an obscure track in neighbouring County Meath in 1975.

Just before the start, Mr Curley and a group of associates placed bets totalling ?U516,500 at off-course bookmakers around the country and won $U5330,000. His biggest flop, he said, was losing $U5165,000 on the 1982 English Derby.

But on balance it has been up all the way, and eight years ago Mr Curley bought Middletown Park for a sum he has not disclosed.