Winners of Grade 1 feature races at the Cheltenham Festival are usually drawn from a small number of  owners such as JP McManus, Gigginstown, Cheveley Park Stud, Joe Donnelly and Rich Ricci. In this Cheltenham week series we spotlight business types who dream of upsetting the applecart

Honeysuckle is the runaway favourite for the Unibet Champion Hurdle, the feature race of the first day of this year's Cheltenham Festival, but an Irish construction magnate has hopes of causing an upset.

Michael Masterson, who left his native Achill Island, Co Mayo for London in the 1960s to find work as a carpenter before building his construction empire, owns the Willy Mullins-trained Appreciate It, second in the betting for the two-mile hurdle.

Masterson, 71, developed an interest in horse racing after moving to the UK and bought his first racehorse in the late 1990s, winning a number of prestigious races with Balder Succes before securing his inaugural Cheltenham victory with Silver Jaro in the 2008 County Hurdle.

Appreciate It earned Masterson his second Cheltenham win in last year's Supreme Novices Hurdle while his other horse at the festival, Kilcruit, came second in the Champion Bumper.

The Mayo man is a fixture at the festival, which he has been attending for 40 years.

In Association with

After watching from home last year, Masterson, wife Mona and family are set to return to their box at Cheltenham for the opening day of the 2022 festival to see Appreciate It in action.

Horses owned by the family have included Cherub, Neon Wolf, Carraig Mor, and Two Rockers, and such is Masterson's affinity for Cheltenham that Masterson Holdings is the long-time sponsor of the Masterson Holdings Hurdle at the Gloucestershire racecourse's October meet.

Masterson founded concrete frame contractors Getjar Ltd in 1980 before going on to establish construction plant and machinery leasing company Glencoe Plant Services in 1994, and carpentry fit-out specialists Atlantic Contracts Ltd in 2001.

Getjar specialises in concrete frames and groundworks for schools, offices and flats, operating in London and through-out the south-east of England. The three companies were consolidated under the Masterson Holdings banner in 2001.

The group reported revenue of £146m and booked a net profit of £7.7m in 2020, a down year for Masterson due to the slowdown in construction during the first waves of Covid-19.

Masterson owns a 47% share of the company and his family hold the remaining equity.

The latest accounts for the Hertfordshire-based group show Masterson's construction empire had retained earnings of £35m at the end of 2020 and it paid out £6.3m in dividends to shareholders, in addition to £4.4m in directors' pay.

The group had 264 employees, including 172 in construction, 77 in administration and technical roles, and 15 directors, among them Michael, who serves as chairman, his wife Mona, and their children, Keith, Margaret, Sean and Michael Jr.

The group also took some £533,000 (€636,000) in Covid assistance grants from the UK government in 2020 while reducing staff numbers by 29.

Masterson said it prides itself on its personal touch, boasting that the family and other directors are "actively involved" with clients on a day-to-day basis and of its "proud record of contracts completed on time, to the highest possible engineering standards, within budget and with safe working practices".

"We work hard to maintain out reputation for consistency, quality, expertise, reliability and timely delivery," the directors stated in the group's most recent accounts filing, adding that they are confident of recovering and continuing to grow the company post-pandemic.

As a Masterson-owned horse trained in Ireland, Appreciate It will run in the green and blue diamonds of Margaret Masterson, while Masterson's British-based horses run in the green and red of his native Mayo.

MORNING PRICES

Honeysuckle 8/13

Appreciate It 7/2

Teahupoo 10/1

Epatante 18/1

Adagio 22/1