IN life, timing tends to be everything and Al Boum Photo’s owners, Joe and Marie Donnelly, certainly have a happy knack of being in the right place at the right time. Cork-born Donnelly (74), is a former bookmaker who took over his father’s business and brought it to the next level.

“Joe Donnelly would have received a very good education from his dad but he was very much a self-made man. In bookmaking parlance, he began at the end of the line and went on to buy rails pitches from the Fogartys in the early 80s. He certainly made very good use of them,” said a bookmaking source.

“Joe was not a keen student of form. He was an odds man – Joe bet to the person and was never afraid to stand a favourite. He was always held in high esteem and got on very well with his fellow bookmakers. Joe would always be quick to help out other people should they need it,” he added.

Joe Donnelly was chairman of the Irish National Bookmakers Association for 16 years and served on the Racing Board and on the board of the Irish Horseracing Authority.

Even though he had a quiet nature, he was considered a highly effective negotiator and a diplomatic advocate for all members of his profession. One of the key concessions Donnelly negotiated for bookmakers was at Leopardstown in 1995, when the new on-course shops were prevented from accepting singles only bets at the home meeting.

On the basis that the collective was greater than the individual sum of the parts, Joe Donnelly decided to sell off all of his bookmaking interests in 2002 and his timing was impeccable.

Technology would soon change the face of the whole betting industry forever. Prior to that sale, Donnelly was already a man of considerable means, having built up significant investments in property and art.

He was prudent enough to spread his property portfolio across a number of European markets, and so avoiding the catastrophic effects of the Irish property collapse in the late noughties.

Joe’s wife, Marie (70), is also a woman of significance. Having moved to Dublin in 1984, the couple soon became deeply involved in the artistic and cultural life of the city.

Marie sat on the board of the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, in the 1990s and served as chair of the Board of Directors at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2000.

Donnelly and her husband have also served on the international boards of New York’s Museum of Modern Art and of the Tate Gallery in London.

Fundraiser

Marie was also a founder member of the Irish Hospice Foundation (IHF) in 1986, joining the board in 1989, and she became chairwoman in 1997. She was an innovative fundraiser and in 1999, managed The Whoseday Project, a 366-page millennium diary that included a single page per day with a contribution from Ireland’s foremost artists and writers (2000 was of course a leap year).

The Whoseday Project eventually raised in excess of £2 million for the Irish Hospice Foundation. It was one of the most successful ever-fundraising ventures of its type.

Joe and Marie Donnelly were similarly effective when it came to the purchase of art. At various stages, they acquired valuable works by Matisse, Picasso, and by other abstract expressionist artists like Willem de Kooning and George Baselitz.

They housed their collection in a very elegant, yet sometimes controversial, 1,000 sq metres ultra-modern art gallery on Dalkey’s exclusive Vico Road.

It was designed by Claudio Silvestrin, a renowned Italian born minimalist architect based in London who described the project on his website as “Project D – Dublin”. Art as an asset class has always provided a robust market and in 2020 it was estimated to have a global value of $64 billion.

The supply of the best works of art will always be limited and tends to appreciate in value over time. Given the Donnellys’ aforementioned art of great timing, it is likely these works have been a significant contributor to their considerable wealth.

Low profile

In spite of his attraction to the finer things in life, Joe Donnelly is widely regarded as an observant, quietly spoken, down to earth gentleman who very much prefers to keep a low profile.

He is said to always seek out advice from the world’s leading exponents in whatever activity he wishes to pursue. When it came to his recent racing success, he obviously held true to that belief.

When the time was right for Donnelly to make a return into racehorse ownership, with considerable encouragement from his good friend and unofficial racing manager, the late great Mick O’Toole, he decided to entrust his horses to two of the foremost National Hunt trainers of our time, Willie Mullins and Nicky Henderson. That strategy has already paid huge dividends.

Having exited from racehorse ownership for well over a decade, the bug returned for Donnelly, and Melon, trained by Willie Mullins, was a very useful 165-rated hurdler, who twice finished second in the Champion Hurdle.

Despite not winning at Grade 1 level, Melon would have undoubtedly whetted Donnelly’s appetite for racing’s big stages once again. In 2018, Melon was beaten a neck by Buveur D’Air, owned by JP McManus, who after the race said: “I’ve known Joe for many years. He was a bookmaker and I was a semi-bookmaker. We had many battles and some of them were more important than today!”

Main course

Melon was the perfect starter for what was to follow as the main course. Al Boum Photo arrived at Closutton in October 2016 and by the following January had won a maiden hurdle at Thurles with ease.

A Grade 2 hurdle success followed at the 2017 Fairyhouse Easter Festival before finishing fifth in a Grade 1 novice hurdle at the following month’s Punchestown Festival.

As a five-year-old, Al Boum Photo won his first ever start over the larger obstacles at Navan and then fell in the RSA Chase at the 2018 Cheltenham Festival, with Ruby Walsh reopening a previous leg fracture in that fall.

Difficulties with the quick ground at the 2018 Leopardstown Christmas Festival also proved to be a stroke of good fortune for Joe Donnelly. Al Boum Photo was re-routed to the then Listed Savills Chase at Tramore and arrived fresh as paint at Cheltenham, where he duly provided Willie Mullins with his much-coveted first Gold Cup success at odds of 12/1.

Immediately after Al Boum Photo had won the 2019 Gold Cup, Joe Donnelly in a rare television interview said “It’s always great to have a winner at Cheltenham. I am particularly thrilled for Willie to win his first Gold Cup.

“I once had a horse trained by the great gambler, Barney Curley, and it was appropriately called Keep Hope Alive. Barney rang me this morning and told me he really fancied my horse. He has been a great friend of mine for over 40 years, so Barney, we’re here!”

Same path

Being a creature of habit, Mullins went down the same path and Al Boum Photo retained the Gold Cup in 2020 with a neck to spare over Santini – this time as the 100/30 favourite.

With relatively low mileage – just 17 career starts to date – Al Boum Photo will return to the Cotswolds shortly for a tilt at history and he has already successfully negotiated his annual New Year’s Day outing at Tramore.

Al Boum Photo is also a horse that has provided jockey Paul Townend with the highest and lowest moments of his career. The highs are detailed above but the low point came in 2018 at Punchestown when he mistakenly steered Al Boum Photo to the right of the final fence in the Grade 1 Growise Novice Chase having thought he had heard a shout from his left to avoid the obstacle.

There was uproar afterwards from disgruntled punters and Townend had to issue an apologetic statement for his “genuine mistake”. There was no need to apologise to his laid-back owner, however, who given his history in the slings and arrows of racing, would have put it down to ‘just another one of those things’.

As a classic example of Joe Donnelly’s preferred hands-off approach to the training of his horses, it was a sporting decision for him to allow two of his promising young horses, Shishkin, trained by Nicky Henderson, and Asterion Forlonge, trained by Willie Mullins, to compete against each other at last season’s Supreme Novices’ Hurdle at Cheltenham.

They finished first and fourth respectively and have made into very exciting novice chasers this season. His equine interests have proven to be as shrewd as most of his business deals.

Aside from those already mentioned, Donnelly also has other exciting horses in training with Mullins and Henderson, notably recent Grade 1 winning novice hurdler Gaillard Du Mesnil. There’s also The Big Getaway, Ramillies, Tactical Move and Heross Du Seuil.

He also recently acquired the hugely exciting juvenile hurdler French Aseel, winner of a maiden hurdle at Leopardstown at Christmas by 22 lengths. French Aseel, formerly trained by Ellmarie Holden, will now be stationed alongside some of his other stars at Closutton.

Great moments

Joe and Marie Donnelly, who reside principally in France, look certain to have some great racing moments in the near future but something that no amount of money can guarantee is rapidly approaching.

With Al Boum Photo’s back-to-back Gold Cup victories in their distinctive black and yellow check racing silks, they are now on the cusp of joining some of racing’s legendary owners like Dorothy Paget (Golden Miller), Anne Duchess of Westminster (Arkle) and Jim Lewis (Best Mate), whose horses have managed to achieve the Holy Grail by winning three Cheltenham Gold Cups.

It would be an appropriate feat by a horse that, similar to his owners, managed to achieve so much in a relatively low-key fashion.?