How affordability checks kept a successful Cheltenham owner from some of his £100,000 in winning bets

You know your Cheltenham Festival has gone well when long after the meeting has ended, you have still not finished counting all your winnings.

That has been the situation experienced by one of this year's successful Cheltenham owners Chris Giles – although amid the celebrations, there has been the sort of exasperation so many punters have experienced in this era of affordability checks.

Readers may recall Giles has already spoken to the Racing Post about the first half of this tale. After Iceo and Crambo carried his silks to victory at Sandown on Imperial Cup day, Giles revealed he had backed the two winners and also invested quite substantially on his Paul Nicholls-trained festival outsiders Greaneteen and Stay Away Fay. The problem, he noted then, was some of the wagers were placed with a firm that was blocking Giles's access to his account due to his refusal to comply with demands to share personal financial information.

"I don't want to give Ladbrokes a hard time, except that they are giving me a hard time," says Giles, who watched Greaneteen meet the each-way terms of his ante-post bets when taking third in the Champion Chase at 25-1. Two days later, Stay Away Fay captured the Albert Bartlett Novices' Hurdle at 18-1 having previously been available at almost double those odds.

"What I can't say is how much I staked on the horses with Ladbrokes because they won't give me access to my account," explains Giles.

"Some of my ante-posts on Stay Away Fay were with Ladbrokes and I was also backing Greaneteen ante-post for the Champion Chase right back to when he won the Haldon Gold Cup. I was putting the horses into each-way doubles as well, but I'm a bit of a coward and don't bet like JP McManus or Tony Bloom. I tend to do my bets little by little but they can then add up to a lot."

Stay Away Fay wins the Albert Bartlett Novices' Hurdle for owner Chris GilesCredit: Michael Steele

So can the profits.

"Every time I've had a win, I've stuck on a little bit more," admits Giles. "I would say that across the week, from the Saturday at Sandown to the Friday at Cheltenham, I won at least £100,000, but there's a chunk of that I haven't been able to get to because Ladbrokes haven't let me access it. 

"What I should stress is I have bad days as well. That was an exceptional and unusual week for me. This sort of run happens to me once every ten years. If I was being employed as a tipster I would pretty quickly get the sack. I would much rather read and watch Paul Kealy."

Like the rest of us, Giles has read plenty about bookmakers carrying out the affordability checks that have smashed a hole in British racing's income due to customers refusing to hand over financial documents like bank statements and payslips and thereafter being prevented from betting. Bookmakers have insisted they are primarily seeking to avoid financial censure from the Gambling Commission, whose regulatory influence has been significantly heightened in the dangerous void caused by the government's ongoing failure to publish its gambling white paper.

"The white paper issue is a fiasco," says Giles. "It does seem to me, though, that experiences like mine are about firms using this situation for their own ends. The time Ladbrokes started asking me questions coincided with a reasonable win I had well before Sandown. They said to me that until I provided three months of bank statements, my deposits would be restricted to something like £100 a week. I told them I wouldn't give them the information. 

"It's not actually a point of principle because I've provided statements to Sky Bet and Fitzdares. It's more about the way Ladbrokes asked for it, blocking access to the account until I gave them the information. I suspect there is probably about £15,000 in there. Ladbrokes should be saying they are happy to close my account and give me my money. What's the impediment to them doing that?"

Giles has now informed Ladbrokes he will submit to the checks. He is also able to access winnings with bet365, although that organisation imposed a deposit limit of £250 per month on an owner who spends a fortune each year buying horses and paying training fees.

Iceo landed an important success for owner Chris Giles (second left) in the Imperial Cup at Sandown Credit: Mark Cranham

"Why restrict someone who doesn't have any financial difficulties to £250 per month?" asks an incredulous Giles. "I was lucky that three weeks before the Sandown double I won about £1,000 with bet365. I used that to back Iceo and Crambo. I then won a lot more on them and put it on Stay Away Fay."

Giles's testimony makes clear his frustration with Ladbrokes. In a wider sense, the saga provides further evidence of the Gambling Commission-driven friction being introduced between bookmakers and perhaps hundreds of thousands of punters. For while the well-intentioned motivation behind affordability checks was to protect those at risk of harm, the vast majority of punters do not want or need an outside party telling them how they can spend their own money.

Responding to Giles's story, a Ladbrokes spokesperson said: "We have affordability limits in place as instructed by the Gambling Commission and while we know asking for personal documentation is extremely intrusive, and often refused by customers, we are required to do so."

Given Giles's superb run of form, readers may be keen to know about future plans for some of his stars.

"We're very keen to run Stay Away in the Sefton at Aintree," says Giles. "It looks like the perfect race for him and Crambo might go for the Mersey there. The plan with Iceo is to head to Ayr if the ground comes up soft, but if the ground isn't right there I would be keen on the Prix la Barka at Auteuil, where we had success with Ptit Zig."

There is good reason for Giles to be excited. Most of us will, of course, never own a string of high-class jumpers. The chance of being confronted by affordability checks is much greater.

This column is exclusive to Members' Club Ultimate subscribers. Read more of Lee Mottershead's articles for members here:

Mullins can be a tough boss but his admiration for Townend shines through after Galopin's Gold Cup 

Galopin Des Champs needs some new worlds to conquer - so how about Aintree?  

Mullins is mighty again but the heart goes out to the festival's unluckiest trainer 

Two astonishing horses give us the sort of festival day we will be lucky to experience again

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