{"id":394383,"date":"2026-04-12T07:13:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T07:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/394383\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T07:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T07:13:09","slug":"aintree-punters-100000-national-bet-pays-maximus-dividends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/394383\/","title":{"rendered":"Aintree punter&#8217;s \u00a3100,000 National bet pays Maximus dividends"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When one punter showed complete confidence in I Am Maximus by placing a bet of \u00a3100,000 (\u20ac115,000) with an on-course bookmaker about him winning the  <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishexaminer.com\/sport\/racing\/arid-41825654.html\">Randox Grand National for a second time<\/a>, perhaps the writing was on the wall for his Aintree rivals.<\/p>\n<p>Owned by JP McManus, I Am Maximus was the winner of the world\u2019s greatest steeplechase in 2024 and second 12 months ago, and was bidding to emulate Red Rum in regaining his Liverpool crown. He duly did, powering home as the 9-2 favourite in the hands of Paul Townend.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Well-known pundit and personality Johnny Dineen was fronting the Fitzwilliam pitch that took the bet and told the Press Association: \u201cIt\u2019s the biggest bet we\u2019ve ever taken, \u00a3100,000 at 8-1.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cIt\u2019s our biggest bet by a mile and we\u2019ll have to try to trade some of it off in the ring.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cIt goes without saying it would be a bad result for us!\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">I Am Maximus was one of six runners for McManus \u2013 who admitted he had a \u201clittle bit on\u201d \u2013 in the race and as well as the winner he had the second in Iroko and fourth in Johnnywho.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">With Dineen having left to catch a flight home, it was left to Kieran Stokes to tell Fitzwilliam\u2019s tale of woe.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cWe did lay some of it off but not enough!\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cIt was the money that followed after which made it worse as he went off 9-2, it was just a steady stream of support for him in the final hour.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cGrangeclare West was very popular, but we also laid a few quid on Jordans as well so when he shot clear and the only hope we had of getting him beat was I Am Maximus we knew we were in trouble!<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cIt\u2019s been a great week, our first time here and it\u2019s not put us off, we\u2019ll be back next year to have another go. It\u2019s the hardest race of the year for a reason.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cYou grew up on stories of how good trade was in betting rings and this has been a throwback to that I suppose.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cThere was an almighty gamble on the winner of the Irish National on Easter Monday as well, but we were on the right end of that as the owner of the horse, Paul Byrne, also owns our company!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When one punter showed complete confidence in I Am Maximus by placing a bet of \u00a3100,000 (\u20ac115,000) with&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-394383","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}