Laying the odds in ÔMellows countryÕ

Date Published: 25-Jul-2012

CIARAN TIERNEY

ASK Castlegar hurling trainer and city-based bookmaker John Walsh for his favourite memory from the Galway Races and he quickly recalls the day he tried to stop a six-year-old Katie Walsh from gaining access to the reserved Owners and Trainers area over 20 years ago.

Walsh spent 15 summers working at the Ballybrit course and, while on security duties, was under strict orders not to allow children into the reserved area at the back of the Corrib Stand without the required identification when young Katie tried to slip by him.

“This young one just looked at her watch as she passed me out,” he recalled this week. “I asked her if she had the required badge. She told me her dad was a trainer. When I asked for his name, she told me he was Ted Walsh (RTE TV pundit) and that her brother’s name was Ruby.

“Convinced at this stage that she was who she said she was, I let her pass through. Security wouldn’t have been too strict them days! I asked her had she any tips for the weekend. She told me that her Dad had a good horse running in the last race on the last day, about three days later. I remembered the horse and, sure enough, it came in at 6 or 7 to 1!”

Katie, of course, has since grown up to become one of Ireland’s leading amateur jockeys and came third on Seabass in this year’s Aintree Grand National. When John sees her on TV, he smiles as he remembers the tip he got from a six-year-old child.

Growing up in Mervue, the Galway Races were a highlight of the summer for John. He and his friends would ‘sneak’ into the course via the back of the old Digital plant in the Ballybrit Industrial Estate, although they were more interested in the ‘hurdy-gurdys’ such as the bumper cars in the middle of the course than the nags in those days.

In his late teens and 20s, he secured a coveted job at the track each summer. For ten years he would be on the course at 6am on each day of the Galway Races, ensuring the track was in pristine condition for the jockeys and horses.

“You would be out on the track at dawn and you’d meet the jockeys out walking, getting the ‘feel’ of the course,” said Walsh. “I worked there for 15 years and I was out on the course for ten of them. You’d have to be up there for 6am. You’d pick up the whips and get talking to the jockeys and they would give you the odd bit of information!

“You would be going around with buckets of sand, getting the surface right. I don’t envy them next week, with all the rain we’ve had lately, but I used to love being out there for the whole week. I miss being out there.”

Walsh opened a new bookmakers’ shop in Bohermore in January of this year, the fourth branch of the Best Bet chain he set up with his Mayo-based brother-in-law, Damien Lavelle, four years ago.

John had been in the car sales business at the time. Then pharmacist Damien took over a vacant bookmaker’s premises next door to his chemist in Belmullet, Co Mayo. John would help out when visiting with his wife Natalie and children Adam (now 10) and Joe (3) at the weekends.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.