Bookies count blessings after dodging €70m Ruby bullet

“The stats say they won’t all win,” said Ruby Walsh, in his Irish Examiner preview of his four mounts — all favourites — on day one of the Cheltenham Festival.

But the meeting’s leading rider went agonisingly close to pulling off a famous four-timer which would have taken the bookmakers for over £50 million (€70m).

With confidence high in the Mullins camp, and another successful season at home building expectation for the Festival, punters who had latched onto the stable’s hot-pots were waiting on Annie Power to complete the four-timer.