Bad weather fails to undermine festival’s unique pulling power

JOHN Moloney’s pre-Galway Summer Festival expectation that the total crowd for the week-long meeting would top the 2012 attendance was only thwarted by the monsoon-like conditions which marred the two feature days at Ballybrit.

In fact, it was a minor miracle that despite over two inches of rain drenching the track in just over a 24 hour mid-week period, the festival’s marathon 52-race programme was completed on schedule after some reshuffling of the running order for the final two days of the meeting.

But the biggest wonder of all was that 27,669 racegoers – a record crowd for an Irish race meeting in 2013 – defied the incessant downpour on Ladies Day and, in the process, saw trainer Michael Winters emulate last year’s feat of landing the Guinness Galway Hurdle.

Though the attendance last Thursday was down nearly 10,000 on the previous year’s figure, Horse Racing Ireland officials, bookmakers and hardened hacks were all astonished that so many people ignored the awful weather to underline once again the unique pulling power of the Galway summer festival.

Though the heavy rain also led to a reduction in the Plate Day crowd from 18,145 in 2012 to 14,038 last Wednesday, the attendance for each of the other five days of the festival was up on last year with Friday evening’s crowd of 23,555 showing an increase of over 3,000 on last year’s corresponding figure.

Track manager Moloney paid tribute to the ground staff at Ballybrit for ensuring racing went ahead without interruption on the festival’s two feature days. “Gerry Broderick and his team did a terrific job in difficult circumstances and, of course, I would also like to thank so many racegoers for braving the bad weather.

“It was probably the wettest day I have ever seen for racing, but we have lots of facilities and cover up here . . . and that helped. Only for the drainage work that was done, we wouldn’t have been able to get out as wide to race as we did. We were lucky to continue racing and it’s a tribute to everyone concerned that we managed to pull it off,” said Moloney,