Don’t Touch won the Ayr Gold Cup
Boomakers William Hill were spared a £5 million payout on Saturday after Innocent Touch could not repeat the successes of the same owner’s Another Touch, Don’t Touch and Right Touch at Ayr.
Innocent Touch was sent off favourite to land the 1m5f handicap and complete a memorable four-timer for owners Nicholas Wrigley and Kevin Hart with their only four horses in training, all with Richard Fahey.
The owners had already enjoyed a 314-1 treble with Another Touch in the mile nursery, Right Touch in the 7f handicap and topped up by Don’t Touch maintaining his unbeaten record in the William Hill Ayr Gold Cup.
Bookmakers waited nervously to see if the fourth ‘Touch’ horse would land a number of multiple bets. However, Innocent Touch finished in the middle of the pack behind 50-1 winner Hardstone.
Big payout anyway
William Hill spokesman Jon Ivan-Duke said: “As it was we probably paid out £2.5 million on the Touch horses; that would be the singles on Don’t Touch, winner of the Ayr Gold Cup, which was a £2 million pay-out and then another half a million for the doubles and trebles.
The defeat for Innocent Touch was a rare reversal for Fahey on a special Saturday on which he claimed the Group 2 Dubai Duty Free Mill Reef Stakes with Ribchester as well as the Ayr Gold Cup. In total, he has six winners at combined odds of 141,395-1
“We haven’t seen any obvious gamble cash in the sense of a Barney Curley-esque gamble, but we have seen smaller shop bets which have accumulated and caused run ups going onto Innocent Touch in the last race which would have essentially doubled our losses on the day had it won,” Ivan-Duke added.
Dream day
“This is the stuff of dreams,” said Fahey after Right Touch had won. “It was Kevin Hart’s idea to run them all and it’s been a fantastic day for them, it’s unbelievable.”
Wrigley, former York racecourse chairman and senior steward of the Jockey Club, said: “Isn’t it remarkable? The number of people who have come up to me, who I’ve never met before, and have said ‘congratulations, we’ve put all these in a yankee’.”
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