Punter lands ‘historic’ payout as bookies admit ‘this is the best bet in years’

A SMALL-TIME punter landed a life-changing payout after rocking bookies with what they admitted was ‘one of the best bets we’ve seen in years’.

The £2 Lucky 15 (£30 total stake) included a 100-1 winner as part of the four winning selections in consecutive races at Chelmsford.

And it returned a truly colossal £188,492.80.

The punter, who staked the bet at a William Hill shop in Wakefield, saw their bet get off to the perfect start when Philos won at 18-1.

Rab Havlin steered the Ed Dunlop-trained four-year-old to victory before things got really interesting in the next.

And it was Dunlop again who was in the winners’ enclosure when Royal Praise struck at ridiculous odds.

The 100-1 chance, under 1000 Guineas-winning rider Silvestre De Sousa, saw off 2-1 Marefuori by three-quarters-of-a-length in a Class 5 handicap over 1m2f.

Candle Of Dubai kept the chance of the massive payout landing when Charlie Johnston’s charge won the next at 5-1.

It meant the whole thing rolled onto the last when Johnston and jockey Billy Loughnane teamed up again with 4-1 Wadacre Gomez.

The 4-1 chance was drawn from the inside stall one and broke smartly away.

The four-year-old colt led well but faced competition inside the final furlong only to find more and more and win by half a length in the end.

It meant all four legs of the monster Lucky 15 hand landed – and the punter’s life changed forever.

Spokesperson for William Hill, Lee Phelps, said: “We witnessed a historic bet in one of our Wakefield shops on Thursday night, with one punter scooping close to £190,000 after a landing a sensational winning Lucky 15 bet.

“It’s rare to see a 100-1 winner, and it’s even rarer to see it land as part of a mammoth Lucky 15.

“This has to go down as one of the best small-stake bets we’ve seen in recent years.”

While the duty manager at the shop commented: “He’s a regular and a really nice bloke.

“He usually has £1 Lucky 15s but for whatever reason he chose to double his stake!

“We had a big payout not so long ago, but £188,000 is definitely a record for us.

“Someone else was working the night the bet came in and he rang me up because he’d seen that the liability had come up on the screen.

“When he actually looked into the bet, the last horse was just crossing the line, and that was it.”

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