April 9th, 2005
Paddy Power and the Grand National
Seeing as it’s Grand National day and I’ve always had a flutter, I thought I’d jump
online and have a flutter. Managed to back Forest Gunner to win (It’d be great to see a female jockey win for the first time) and stick an each way bet on Colonel Rayburn. Then I remembered that over the years, my dad would always pick a ’secret’ horse. Invariably this was a wonky, three-legged old nag who’d be lucky to get around Aintree once, let alone the requisite twice for the National. The odds were very long - usually 250-1 at least and none of them ever came in, but it was the lure that for about 10 minutes you thought you might be in line to win a few hundred quid.
So back to Paddy Power I go and the site is down. The race is still 40 minutes away and the site has been down for 10 minutes already. Why not increase the bandwidth for the day? How can one of Ireland’s biggest online bookies not have prepared for the upturn in traffic that comes with the most high profile horse races of the year?
The plan was to put a fiver each way on Shamawan who’s either 125 or 150-1 and the return is 755 euro. But still PP’s site is buckling under the weight of once-off rookie gamblers like me and missing out on the chance to take my foolishly tendered cash off me.
If Shamawan wins, I’ll cry…