At Sunday’s Pontefract meet, there was a stunning day by the pairing of Champion Jockey Silvestre de Sousa and trainer Mick Appleby. They combined to give De Sousa a win in all four of his mounts on the day and it was one of those special performances which saw bookmakers have to dig deep into their pockets. Betfred reported losing £2.5 million on De Sousa’s efforts on the weekend.
De Sousa took the rides of Michele Strogoff, Big Country, Future Score and Classic Pursuit for Appleby– at combined odds of 654-1, with a Betfred spokesman observing: “De Sousa is undoubtedly the punters’ favourite – and he obliged big time.
“Congratulations to thousands of our customers who went nuts after the Brazilian had a perfect day. Our high street customers have had an absolute field day combining the four rides of the most popular of jockeys.”
Bookmaker Boylesports was another operator who got stung pretty hard as well with them having to shell out over €16,000 for a stake of just €15.50 on a Lucky 31 to just one customer. That epic winning bet comprised De Sousa’s four winning mounts along with another selection, Mr Orange.
BoyleSports spokeswoman Aoife Heffron said: She added: “De Sousa’s four winners were a popular selection with punters, seeing a host of BoyleSports customers receive relatively large returns for choosing to get behind the champion jockey. Let’s just say the good day we had on Saturday was undone in about four minutes on Sunday.”
