Mick O’Toole remembered: 'The good days had always outnumbered the bad'

The three respectable looking couples arriving from Ireland for a Florida vacation would have glided unnoticed through immigration. Back then American border control agents approached their work with a lighter touch than they do these days and wouldn’t have realised that they were welcoming living legends to their shores. The officials wouldn’t have known that the three gentlemen of the party were the gravitational centre of the wild west world of late 1970s Irish horseracing. Mayhem and mischief were on tour.

By Colm Greaves

The three respectable looking couples arriving from Ireland for a Florida vacation would have glided unnoticed through immigration. Back then American border control agents approached their work with a lighter touch than they do these days and wouldn’t have realised that they were welcoming living legends to their shores.