'Nobody will win as much on horseracing this century' - the very best of Barney

"I would think it'd be split 50-50. You'd have the people saying on one hand, 'Isn't he great?' And you'd have 50 per cent of people saying, 'That is some bandit.'"
Curley tells Nick Luck how he thinks the racing public perceives him

"The Baron sent me over a little fella – a good jockey called Rene – and he was riding Manduro. I said to him, 'How's he going? 'Good, yeah'. 'How good do you think he is, Rene?' He said, 'He's too good for you'. A right insult. He never got beat. He went back to Fabre. It struck my mind, should I run this horse in the Cambridgeshire? He was rated about 92 or 93. But I said to myself, I had better inform the Baron."
The story of how Curley briefly trained future world champion Manduro for Baron Georg von Ullman

"Nobody will win as much on horseracing this century."
Speaking the year after his 2010 coup

"If God had asked me which one to back, I'd have said, 'Back Sommersturm' – but he never raised a gallop."
Curley on Sommersturm, the beaten 1-3 favourite at Wolverhampton who prevented a four-timer in the 2010 coup

"You're a farce and so is he, he knows nothing about racing. Brave man? He was an underachiever and knows nothing. Right the show's over boys. Thank you very much."
Curley signs off after a tempestuous encounter with ATR presenters John McCririck and Luke Harvey at Folkestone in 2005

'Someone clearly told him what John was saying and he came storming out'

"The press picks up on Yellow Sam, they pick up on 2010, but they never picked up the other ones. I remember having a right touch one day at Market Rasen, I think it was a horse called Health And Happiness, 14-1 or something. I had a right tickle. I think the late Henry Oliver went for a tickle in the same race. But I planned it. People would be watching you so what I did was, I got a plane and I landed over at Thurles racecourse. I think they were having a do there for something and I made sure that I was well seen at Thurles racecourse."
Curley tells Nick Luck about a gamble that went unreported in the press

"This is from the bottom of my heart. I am serious about this – I don't want to talk about it. I have a reason for saying that because it's a distraction from what I'm trying to do [with Direct Aid For Africa]. It's over now, we've done it – it was very satisfying. Let's hope it does a bit of good. I'm a retired racehorse trainer. I'm not really a retired owner though – I have a few young horses. It was very tough but I got two letters which I kept – that satisfies me."
Curley reflects on the 2014 coup

"It was one man's brains against the bookmakers. I'd outwitted the system and taken advantage of unique circumstances. If they'd been able to, the bookies would have driven the price of that horse into the ground."
Quote from Nick Townsend's book, The Sure Thing, on the Yellow Sam coup

"When that happened, I just had a talk to myself and I was not a very nice human being. All I did was think of myself. Me, myself and I. And I hurt a lot of people. I just said to myself after that, I have to change. And I had to go and apologise to all these people."
Curley on the impact of his son dying in a car accident in 1995

"Racing never gave me that happiness, that piece of mind, that this gives me."
Curley on his charity work with Direct Aid For Africa

Barney Curley at the Umukolamfula children's centre, NdolaCredit: Edward Whitaker

"If you go to the bank every Wednesday and draw a big bundle of money out and then you always go the same way home. Somebody will rob you. You have to change your plans."
Curley on how he was able to execute several coups with multiple runners

"I didn't want owners because owners wouldn't suit my plans. Owners were leads. You can't very well be telling people bare-faced lies. Owners are inclined, if you have a runner at three o'clock, they ring you up at half 12 – 'How's my horse Barney? Will you be working him soon?' Then you would get – 'How will that horse of yours run in the 2.30?' And that would always give it away."
On why he had to remain a one-man band

"I have to say I never was afraid of anything. If somebody challenged me, I'd say I could do it, there's always a way."
More Curley wisdom on his can-do attitude

"I'd advise anybody who sees this happening again to either ignore it or open an exchange account and lay the horses because I can guarantee you, from my perspective anyway, there are no more four-timers, that's it, I'm done, retired."
Curley insists he is out of the racing business during a Cheltenham preview evening in Galway in March 2016

"There's no way this time I'll be back in racing. It takes an awful lot of work, you don't realise how much it takes to get these things organised, it's an unbelievable bit of work. I just haven't the energy for it. I'm quite content to go to Africa, that's my life now, racing is behind me. I enjoyed racing while I was at it, but I think I've been granted a great privilege to be able to do what I'm doing and have the health to do it."
Curley at the Galway preview night about why there will be no more coups

Read more on Barney Curley:

Barney Curley, legendary punter and former trainer, dies aged 81

'He got under people's skin but men like him are few and far between'

Yellow Sam: a perfectly executed gamble that netted Barney Curley a fortune

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