The Mayfair office of David Manasseh, part owner of Gallagher Novices’ Hurdle favorite Ballyburn, does not disappoint. It’s everything you’d hope a football super manager’s office would be, except the walls aren’t full of player photos.
There’s a cigar box in the corner, housing a cigar the size of a sawn-down telegraph pole.
Manasseh’s CAA Stellar football agency boasts the likes of Jack Grealish, Luke Shaw, Jordan Pickford and Ivan Toney. He has been involved with Gareth Bale throughout his career, including his £85 million move from Tottenham Hotspur to Real Madrid.
Perhaps more relevant to Wednesday’s race is Manasseh’s role in looking after half a dozen Brighton players, given their chairman Tony Bloom owns second favorite Ile Atlantique.
Manasseh, 55, set up a sports agency in the mid-nineties, taking on West Indian cricketer Brian Lara as his first client, before switching to football. He never looked back.
His father, who was omnipresent in the Big Flat days, always had racehorses – Manasseh won the Lincoln Handicap on Blustery in 1977 when he was still in shorts – and he still has horses with Simon Crisford.
What wasn’t in his DNA became even stronger when, in his early twenties, he met Shergar’s jockey Walter Swinburn through Queens Park Rangers footballer Don Shanks; Swinburn had learned that Manasseh had been playing as a left-arm spinner for five years. He plays for the Harrow School XI at Lord’s four times and captains the team.
Swinburn asked him to join the Newmarket coaches’ cricket XI, where he played alongside Michael Stoute and two other former Harrovians, Julian Wilson and William Haggas. “I knew I was good,” Manasseh recalls of his own cricket career. “And arrogant!”
His first horse was with Martin Pipe. His first proper was Whispered Secret, who won the chase for Martin’s son David on Cheltenham Trials day in 2007. He won the Street Entertainer at Punchestown in 2011, driven by Sir Tony McCoy.
McCoy then introduced Manasseh to David Casey, Willie Mullins’ assistant at Royal Ascot, who persuaded him to take a stake in MC Muldoon, who won by a short head in the Ascot Stakes.
Their ambitions are growing because the Flat season coincides with the summer transfer window – “Try making a deal at Goodwood with no phone service” – and for the last 15 years Manasseh has had a box at Cheltenham on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. where he invites his friends and his football players’ parents.
“I met Ronnie Bartlett [Ballyburn part-owner] some time. His son-in-law is former football player Hal Robson-Kanu. Two years ago I invited him to my box at Cheltenham and said, ‘Ronnie, do me a favour, if you want a partner on the horse, give me a call, I’m all for it.’ A few months later he says ‘I found it’. ‘I’m in. I said, ‘Paste your colors, send me the invoice, and I’ll come with you for the trip because I’m too busy with work.’ That was Ballyburn.”
‘Like a semi-final-final match in the Champions League’
Since the six-year-old won the Grade One novices’ hurdle by seven lengths at the Dublin Racing Festival in February, Manasseh has been the definition of excitement as a boy to the power of 10 on Christmas Eve.
He makes a comparison by saying, “This is like the period between the Champions League semi-final and the final for a football player, do not get injured.”
“Since winning at Leopardstown a few people have said pray you don’t get a call from Willie Mullins. It’s a bit like a player, you want to get to the final but you have three league games, you don’t want to get injured and the horse has three jobs to do.
“He won his first bumper. Beaten but Patrick [Mullins, the jockey] She slapped him and he stood up. Then, when he won at Punchestown, I was driving him back and Patrick said ‘wow, this has sixth gear’. I knew then that it could be pretty good.
“I spent all of last summer looking at Oddschecker and Betfair. “This convinced me that he could be above average because people were already supporting him for the Festival.”
If Manasseh wakes up at night, he looks at Betfair. “Sometimes, if his luck is running out, it’s in the middle of the night and I just feel like calling Willie and seeing if everything’s okay!” she says.
“The first time it broke through the barriers, it lost to Firefox. Next time he won his first maiden by 30 lengths over 2½ miles, Paul Townend [the jockey] I just pinned him, he has since won second and fourth. His form stands everywhere.
“We had the option of a 2¾ mile race at the Dublin Racing Festival but we went for a two mile race which he won well and until last Thursday we weren’t sure if Willie would take part in the Supreme Race. [two miles] or Gallagher [two miles, five furlongs].
“I know very little personally but people were telling me it was a penalty kick for Gallagher, a drop kick for Supreme. That’s what I heard.
“Patrick wrote in an article that it takes 30 seconds for the accelerator to engage, but once it does, it engages. This sounds more like Gallagher to me.
“I can’t believe this is happening. I didn’t realize that when you have a superior horse like Ballyburn you just want to move on to the next race. I don’t know if other owners call their trainers but I haven’t called Willie since he won in Dublin. I don’t want to. I don’t call him and he hasn’t called me. I know he’s in safe hands.
“It’s one in a million. Ronnie’s had winners at Cheltenham and he just says ‘enjoy the ride’. When you get beaten, he said it takes the excitement out of you. I’ve got a good job, I’m out a lot and it takes your mind off it a bit. In the last 14 days I’ve been to 11 cities in Europe for work. I have a good working relationship with Tony Bloom; we’ve had fights over actors, and on Wednesday there will be fights over horses!
“Mullins thinks I’m a good owner because I understand the sport. I understand you win some and lose some, but enjoy the good days. There are more bad days than good days in sports. Don’t take the good days for granted.
“If he wins at Cheltenham there will be celebration, we will be the last club to close on Wednesday night.”
