The Mayfair office of David Manasseh, co-owner of Ballyburn, the Hurdle favorite of the odds-on Gallagher Novices, does not disappoint. It’s everything you ever hoped a football super agent’s office would look like, except for the fact that the walls aren’t dripping with photos of his players.
In the corner is a humidor with a cigar the size of a sawn-off telegraph pole.
Manasseh’s CAA Stellar football agency features the likes of Jack Grealish, Luke Shaw, Jordan Pickford and Ivan Toney. He looked after Gareth Bale throughout his career, including his £85 million move from Tottenham Hotspur to Real Madrid.
More relevant perhaps to Wednesday’s race is Manasseh’s role in looking after a half-dozen Brighton players, as their chairman, Tony Bloom, owns the second favourites, Ile Atlantique.
Manasseh, 55, founded a sports agency in the mid-1990s when he took on West Indian cricketer Brian Lara as his first client before switching to football. He never looked back.
His father, ubiquitous on the big flat days, has always had racehorses – he won the 1977 Lincoln Handicap with Blustery when Manasseh was still in shorts – and still has horses with Simon Crisford.
What was not yet in his DNA was reinforced in his early twenties when, through Queens Park Rangers footballer Don Shanks, he met Walter Swinburn, Shergar’s jockey, who heard that Manasseh had played as a left-arm spinner for five years. in the Harrow School XI, where he made four appearances at Lord’s and captained the side.
Swinburn asked him to join the Newmarket coaches cricket XI, where he played with Michael Stoute and two other old 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 decent one was Whispered Secret, who won a chase for Martin’s son David on the 2007 Cheltenham Trials day. His Street Entertainer won at Punchestown in 2011 starring Sir Tony McCoy.
McCoy then introduced Manasseh to David Casey, Willie Mullins’ assistant, at Royal Ascot and he persuaded him to take a share in MC Muldoon, who beat a short head in the Ascot Stakes.
His passion is jumping because the Flat season coincides with the summer transfer window – “you’re trying to do a deal on the phone at Goodwood with no service” – and Manasseh has had a box at Cheltenham on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for the past fifteen years, for which he has friends and invites the parents of his football players.
“I met Ronnie Bartlett [Ballyburn part-owner] a couple of times. His son-in-law is the ex-footballer Hal Robson-Kanu. I invited him to my box at Cheltenham two years ago and said, ‘Ronnie, do me a favor, if you ever want a partner in a horse, give me a call, I’ll be in’. A few months later he says, “I found one.” I said, ‘I’m in. Paste it in your colors, send me the invoice, and I will travel with you, because I am very busy at work. That was Ballyburn.
‘This is like the semi-final to final of the Champions League’
Since the six-year-old won a Class One novice hurdle by seven lengths at the Dublin Racing Festival in February, Manasseh has been the definition of excitement, a child on Christmas Eve to the power of ten.
“For a footballer, this is like the period between the semi-final and the final of the Champions League. Make sure you don’t get injured,” he says, making a comparison.
“A few people have said from the moment he won at Leopardstown, pray you don’t get a call from Willie Mullins. It’s just like with a player: you want to reach the final, but you have three competition games, you don’t want to get injured and the horse still has three things to do.
“He won his first bumper. He was beaten, but Patrick [Mullins, the jockey] gave him a slap and he answered. Then when he won at Punchestown I led him back in and Patrick said ‘wow, this has sixth gear’. That’s when I knew he might be pretty good.
“I watched Oddschecker and Betfair all summer last summer. It convinced me that he might be better than average, because people were already supporting him before the festival.”
When Manasseh wakes up at night, he looks at Betfair. “Sometimes, when his chances are dwindling, it’s midnight and I get the urge to call Willie to see if he’s okay!” he says.
“The first time he cleared obstacles he was defeated by Firefox. Next time he won his first over 2½ miles by 30 lengths, Paul Townend [the jockey] just gave him a squeeze, since then the second and fourth won. Its form is reflected everywhere.
“At the Dublin Racing Festival we had the option of a 2¾ mile race but we went for a two mile race, he won that well and until last Thursday we weren’t sure if Willie would go for the Supreme. [two miles] or Gallagher [two miles, five furlongs].
“Personally I know very little, but people told me it was a penalty for the Gallagher, a dropkick for the Supreme. That’s what I heard.
“Patrick wrote in an article that it takes 30 seconds for the accelerator to kick in, but when it does, it does. That sounds more like Gallagher to me.
“I can’t believe it’s happening. I didn’t know that when you have a top horse like Ballyburn, you just want to go 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 do not want. I don’t call him and he hasn’t called me either. I know he is in the best hands.
“This is one in a million. Ronnie had winners at Cheltenham and all he says is ‘enjoy the journey’. When he got beat, he said it would take the hype out of him. I have a good business, I’m on the road a lot and it takes your mind off it a bit. Over the past 14 days I have been to 11 cities in Europe with the job. I have a good working relationship with Tony Bloom – we have had an argument about players, on Wednesday it will be about horses!
“Mullins thinks I’m a good owner because I understand sports. I understand you win some and you lose some, but enjoy the good days. There are more bad days than good days in sports. Don’t take good days for granted.
“There will be a celebration if this wins at Cheltenham, we will be the last box to close on Wednesday night.”
