Ballybrit proves a law unto itself

IT’S just as well that the Galway Summer Festival isn’t going ahead this week. Heavy rain has hit the West over the past few days which would have seriously impacted on crowd and betting returns at Ballybrit.

From Sunday afternoon to Tuesday morning, Galway racecourse was struck by a 72mms deluge with more bad weather forecast for later in the week.

As it was, the 150th anniversary meeting of the Galway Races suffered a small drop off in numbers despite a huge crowd of 30,823 turning up for the Friday evening fixture.

There was also a jump in attendance (20,397) on the opening evening of the festival, while betting turnover with the bookmakers for the week showed an increase for the first time in over a decade.

The total figure of €6,801,009 bet in the ring in Galway not alone showed a spike of €460,479 from 2018, but also bucked a trend of declining bookmaker turnover at tracks up and down the country.

Returns for the Tote were down sharply, however, with the total aggregate of €4,230,422 over a million euro less than 12 months ago (€5,298536) for the summer festival.

But that figure is somewhat misleading as it is based on the total international pool – the lucrative Israel market is no longer operational – with the on-course Tote return actually up on one of the days at Ballybrit.

See full coverage in this week’s Connacht Tribune Sport.