Dividing Galway Summer Racing Festival into two meetings is not a runner

THE prospect of splitting the popular Galway Summer Racing Festival into two meetings has been declared a non-runner.

Ruby Walsh, the multi-times Irish champion National Hunt jockey, has suggested that the traditional big Ballybrit extravaganza could be broken up due to the continuing impact of the coronavirus.

Walsh believes that in the current environment, pushing back the staging of the Galway Plate and Guinness Hurdle to the track’s September meeting is an option worth considering.

“As it stands, Galway is going to take place behind closed doors, but do they still have seven days’ racing at the end of July when there’s no spin-off for the city or the area?

“I’d say the maximum Galway can go is four days. These so-called ‘festivals’ aren’t going to be festivals because the fun that goes with them isn’t going to be there.”

Walsh believes that if crowd restrictions were lifted at the end of August, given the massive appeal of the festival’s prime attractions — the Plate and Hurdle — HRI might consider switching those races to the Galway September meeting.

The proposal, however, is not gaining much traction with the General Manager of Galway Racecourse Michael Moloney, who is gearing up for the festival’s original dates – July 27 to August 2.

“That is what we are planning for at present, but these are strange times and it leads to different conclusions at different stages. There is no certainty about anything.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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