Search Results for 'Galway Plate'

And they’re off... as details of the 2012 Galway Races Summer Festival, running from Monday July 30 to Sunday August 5 were announced at the official launch in the g Hotel, Galway yesterday.

“The Galway Races are unique in Irish sport. For this is a real Connaught holiday. Caravans and their picturesque owners are making their trek weeks ahead. Urgent farm work is abandoned for an hour. Business and professional men; regular race-goers, hunting folk, farmers of all ranges of acreage, holiday trippers from the eastern cities; Connemara and Aran Island men and maids who speak English only, are here in colourful buoyant groups. All the fun of the fair; huge fields of beautiful horses; thrilling finishes and good priced winners — all lend glamour and life to this great outdoor festival of the west.

The greatest party anywhere in the eurozone is almost upon us and whether one deals in euros, sterling, dollars, or the Japanese yen all roads will lead to Ballybrit on Monday next as the seven-day marathon that is the Galway Race Week Festival gets under way shortly after five o clock. With more than fifty races on the menu punters will need to tread carefully through a minefield of tough maximum field handicaps and conditions contests under both Flat and National Hunt rules and with margins tight in all walks of life selective punting is advised.

Racing in County Galway took place on a number of courses at the beginning of the 19th century... Kilconnell, Eyrecourt, Brook Lodge (near Tuam), Rahassan, Ballinasloe, Ballymoe, Dunmore, Athenry, Bermingham Hunt (run by John Dennis, Bermingham House, Tuam), and Carraroe Hunt. Only seven of these courses were extant at the dawn of the 20th century.

Well readers, the 2008 Galway Races are virtually upon us and with the prophets of doom and gloom working overtime for the last two months this year’s festival has taken on the role as a barometer of the country’s financial state as well as being the top racing festival in the fair island of ours.

The highlight of the Galway Races, the Galway Plate, proved a winner of No 3 Oslot, the Paul Nicholls-trained horse ridden by Ruby Walsh and owned by stockbroking millionaire Andy Stewart.

Despite high expectations for one of the premiere events of the summer the economic downturn and the environmental downpours led to a major drop in Tote taking and attendance at this year’s Galway Races.