Barry and Mike Maloney: The ties that bind

Their interest in racing was stoked by their late father, who brought them over to Cheltenham year after year

Barry and Mike Maloney at the Leopardstown Racecourse in Dublin last week Picture: Lorraine O’Sullivan

‘The triumph of hope over experience” is how Samuel Johnson once dryly described second marriages. He might just as easily have been talking about National Hunt jumps racing.

Just what is it about jumps racing that makes normally rational men and women part with large sums of money, then go wobbly at the knees as they watch their uninsured and fragile four-legged friends jump around a manicured field in races that tend to ...