Rightly or wrongly, Irishman, Barney Curley always had great confidence about himself. A gambling owner-trainer, Barney was pretty notorious and flurted with the rules of racing. Back in 1975 people knew of his betting deeds, but he wasn't doing so well with the bookies, owing them £12,000, a massive sum at the time. He was well aware he had to do something to change his fortunes and decided to go for the big time one-off gamble, and shoot for one of the most audacious betting escapades ever attempted.

The one thing Barney knew well was how to plan. Curley got the money on via a small army of loyal disciples across the country and ensured an absurdly generous SP by having one of his sturdiest lieutenants occupy the course's lone telephone box for a strategic half-hour, denying the off-course betting firms their crucial lifeline to the track. The first step was to involve his trainer Liam Brennan, an excellent handler of horses. Barney had a collection of horses and he needed to know if any of them could deliver him victory. When enquiring with Liam he was told, you probably have one - he's no world beater but he is well handicapped. The horse was named Yellow Sam, called such as it was Barney's father's nickname.

Growing up in Northern Ireland, Barney was always looking for means to make money, but it was often fraught with danger. He once survived an IRA bombing in Omagh where he was thrown against a wall by the blast, however taking risks was his game. Barney would take show bands across the border and smuggle back Tyre's for a tidy profit, until one night he was stopped by the British army coming back from Dublin. Before he knew it a gunfight broke out with the IRA where he dived back into his car as bullets passed through it like butter. After getting out alive Barney decided this wasn't for him anymore, he needed a fresh new direction in life.

After becoming a professional gambler, some big wins earned him a ferocious reputation with the bookmakers.

A lumpy bet on Crisp at 3-1 for the 1971 Champion Chase at Cheltenham was the start of the journey, and although he dabbled in owning pubs and betting shops along the way, there were some alarming periods of penury – bets like £10,000 to win £35,000 on Roberto to win the 1972 Derby (complete with masterful ride from Lester Piggott and lengthy stewards' inquiry), set him on the way to long-term punting success. He was able to purchase a stud farm and move his family in, but after some big losses, times were becoming quite difficult for the punting maestro.

He relied on Liam Brennan to train Yellow Sam to the minute for Barney to pull off one the biggest betting coups in UK history. He observed for weeks to work out the perfect plan and which track would best suit Yellow Sam, and somehow scraped up £15,000 to use. In the end he decided on the somewhat obscure annual National Hunt meeting at Bellewstown, an amateur jumps race seemingly ideal for the horse. Yellow Sam had finished out of the top 8 in his last 9 runs and had shown little in 20 odds starts. From there Barney set out 150 runners to place £50 to £300 win bets on Yellow Sam minutes before the race start with betting shops all across the county. To ensure the success of the coup, a covert military-style operation was necessary. Curley had to strategically deploy a reliable team of individuals to place bets in a manner that would evade detection.

Yellow Sam, currently at 20/1 odds, had experienced a significant blowout in price from 12/1. The only potential obstacle to his plan would be if someone discovered his intentions before they acted. The Extel line to the bookmaker shops was rendered (conveniently) inoperable early in the day, leaving only one telephone line available for communication with the course bookies responsible for determining the starting prices for the participants. Benny O'Hanlon, a friend of Curley's in on the plot, walked into the telephone booth and pretended to place a call to a dying aunt in a non-existent hospital. His act was convincing, as the queue behind him waiting to use the telephone sympathetically allowed him to continue talking for half an hour, while off-course bookies desperately trying to lay off their liabilities struggled in vain to contact their counterparts on the course. With everything in place the crafty Barney sneaked into the Centre of the course, lurking behind an old gorse bush to watch the race unfold.

Early on Willie Mullins had the favourite in a nice leading position, however Michael Furlong on Yellow Sam surged to the front and shot away. Barney watched nervously as he cleared the final jump and held on to cause a massive upset. The bookies were furious and sought explanations from the trainer and jockey, but they promptly departed the venue to prevent any potential confrontation. Barney Curley slipped quietly away and went home for a cuppa. He wasn't celebrating, more relived then content.

Barney had collected £300,000, equivalent to about $1,700,000 in today's market and many of the losing bookies paid him in £1 notes to show their frustration. He then bought a mansion which he later raffled off for a huge profit. Punters took him to their hearts as 'one of them', a fearless backer with a deep-seated hatred of bookmakers and a primal urge to part them from their cash – notwithstanding the fact he had included top layer Sean Graham in the coup (to pay off a £30,000 debt), which riled even those bookies who did not already hate him. He became a folk hero almost overnight, although everybody had to take a side as to whether he was Robin Hood or Dick Turpin, a champion of the working man or a daylight robber.

The coup made Barney Curley widely known throughout Ireland and the United Kingdom and made headlines in many Irish and British national tabloid newspapers and television reports. To this day, it continues to be listed as one of the greatest betting coups of all time. Curley invested his earnings in a stable of horses which he continued to have trained for specific gambles. Irish bookmakers amended their rulebook following the coup to require that bets of over £100 be placed at least half an hour before the start of the race. Bellewstown Racecourse itself played up the coup in later years, and in 2005 ran the "Seamus Murphy Yellow Sam 30th Anniversary Hurdle", inviting Barney Curley and Liam Brennan to observe the celebrations. Yellow Sam continued to run in other races, with Curley reportedly having earned a further £700,000 in bets on the horse before it was retired.

Barney Curley again made headlines when four horses linked to him won on 22 January 2014 and were widely reported to have cost bookmakers "millions", with a spokesman for British bookmakers Joe Coral admitting they had cost Coral "a six-figure payout" and estimating "the industry has been hit for something in the region of £2million." Frankie Dettori, a party animal in his youth and in need of a steadying hand to safeguard his glittering career, spoke of "a caring man who will put an arm round you when you need it – his whole life story is like somebody’s made it up, but all he really wants to do is help people".