A 'time capsule' letter buried 62 years ago which urged the finder to back any runner whose name could be linked to Santa Claus, helped four lucky punters scoop £2,500 by picking the winner of the Epsom Derby on Sunday, according to The Guardian.
Josh Smalls, site manager on the restoration project at Crystal Palace Park in south London, said the note and four old coins were discovered by a colleague underneath the giant bust of Sir Joseph Paxton, the Victorian designer of the Crystal Palace.
The note explained that the money was the winnings from a bet on a horse named Santa Claus in the 1964 Epsom Derby.
The writer urged any future finder of the time capsule to use the money to bet on a horse in the Derby with a name that “can in some way be associated with ‘Santa Claus.’”
Smalls – speaking before Saturday’s race – told the BBC: “Unbelievably, there is a horse in this year’s Derby called Christmas Day ... To find a piece of history like that – and for it to link up so well with the horse this year – it was kind of spooky. I looked through the rosters of the last few years and couldn’t find any other horse with a Christmassy name.”
Santa Claus was the name of the horse that won the Derby in front of the late Queen in 1964.
Subsequently, a sentimental racing fan who had seemingly backed the horse himself took another gamble without knowing whether it would ever pay off, according to the Daily Mail.
He buried a 'time capsule' in a park in Crystal Palace with a letter and some coins urging the finder to bet on a horse 'whose name can be associated in some way with Santa Claus.'
The time capsule was first discovered in April by Smalls’s colleague, Craciun Marius Dorin, a member of the team overseeing the park’s regeneration, who said: “I’m Romanian and Craciun in Romanian actually means Christmas – isn’t that crazy?”
