Galway will be like nothing before
THE Galway races kick off this evening but it will be a festival unlike any other as it takes place behind closed doors at what will be an eerily quiet Ballybrit.
Instead of the crowds and the craic, the focus will be on the racing to a greater degree than ever before.
With a week of cards to fill, the quality has always been stretched thin enough, but usually the buzz around Ballybrit is enough to camouflage that fact.
An obvious change for the 2020 festival is that instead of the usual mixed cards of flat and National Hunt racing, the cards tonight and tomorrow will be all flat.
The Galway Plate and Galway Hurdle will take centre stage as usual on Wednesday and Thursday, Friday will be an all National Hunt day with a ‘consolation Galway Hurdle’ and the week concludes with all-flat cards on Saturday and Sunday.
There have been prize money cuts across Irish racing in the last couple of months and that is reflected in the pots on offer for the two Festival highlights, the
Plate and the Hurdle, which have been slashed from €300,000 to €200,000.
Racing here received greatlyexpanded coverage from RTÉ on its return from the Covid hiatus as it was one of the few live sports taking place, and the national broadcaster will be at Ballybrit for the first four days of the Festival.
The feature this evening is the Connacht Hotel Handicap for qualified riders at 6.45. Champion Hurdle runner-up Sharjah deservedly heads the market for Willie and Patrick Mullins.
Their biggest challenge could come from De Name Escapes Me, in the JP McManus colours, trained by Noel Meade and ridden by the excellent Derek O’Connor.
De Name Escapes Me and Sharjah will be looking to turn the tables on Dalton Highway, to whom they were second and fourth respectively in a similar event at the Curragh late last month.
Dalton Highway comes from the yard of Dermot Weld, for so long the King of Ballybrit, and will be ridden Jamie Codd, another classy amateur rider.
In what will be a competitive event, preference is for Sharjah to prevail for the Mullins team. In a radically changed racing landscape, some things can still be relied on.