GALWAY HAD ALWAYS BEEN A MEETING FOR THE PEOPLE... NOW IT FEELS LIKE THAT AGAIN IT REALLY IS AN AMAZING WEEK
AS A glistening Tahanny was led away from the winner’s enclosure at leafy Leopardstown on Thursday evening, Dermot Weld casually removed his sunglasses, strolled across to the three waiting reporters and succinctly summed up the performance and future plans for the filly.
There wasn’t a TV camera in sight, or a tape recorder, while the handful of race-goers dotted about the parade ring offered little more than polite applause f or the well-backed favourite. Come Monday, when the weeklong Galway festival gallops into the sporting consciousness, the script will hurtle along at a different l i ck and every Weld utterance, every movement, from a nod of the head, to a leg-up for Pat Smullen, will be scrutinised and dissected.
That there will be Weld-trainer winners is without doubt. The burning question is: how many?
In the battleground of Ballybrit, Weld morphs into a bullet-plated bookie- basher, an eagle - eyed trainer who continues to inflict pain on the layers, more than 40 years after he first aimed his shooting sights on the big pots out west.
He has established records that will never be broken, such as the 253 festival wins, his 28 festivals as top trainer, and that unforgettable fire of 2011 when almost every Weld dart hit the bull, as 17 winners were chalked up on the Rosewell House board of excellence.
Being hugely successful at Galway brings its own external pressures, as there is an expectancy
You have a responsibility to the people who back you
that horses trained by Dermot Kenneth Weld will not only run well, but will win.
If keeping the ambitions of his owners in check is one challenge, Weld is wary of letting down those folk, not all with deep pockets, who will dance to the piper’s tune and follow his festival runners with a Hamelin-like zeal.
His allegiance to those loyal disciples is tangible, while his sporting instincts for combat by the Corrib remain as sharp as ever.
‘Indirectly, you have a responsibility to the people who back your horses and every horse I run at Galway I want to win. There is no point in saying I don’t give a damn if the horses don’t perform because I do,’ says Weld.
‘To have 17 wins was phenomenal, but I don’t want people to think that’s going to happen again. We’d nine last year, if we had nine or 10 next week I’d be more than pleased. I’d say we hold a reasonable hand.
‘I’ll certainly have less runners this year because I’ve less horses. I’ll be up to my usual numbers in Flat runners but I’ve far less National Hunt horses in training than before because the Flat season is now an all-year calendar.’
To supporters rushing off to back his runners, Weld offers a caveat.
‘We’re planning for good ground; we’ve been training the summer horses and the last thing I want to see is soft ground and our horses’ chances being washed away.’
‘If it stays dry, we could have a real good week, it not, we probably won’t do so good.’
Against a backdrop of thunder bolts, lightning and torrential showers i n Dublin, Weld was reminded of a Stygian evening in Galway in the mid-1990s.
‘There was a massive electric storm. At one point, you could see the sparks flying off the transformer over the far side of the track,’ he recalled.
‘I had a very good horse, Dance Design, and wanted her taken out of the parade ring. I said to the lad leading her around: “Brian, take out her, this is dangerous”.
‘Horses are not allowed to be taken out without the permission of the clerk of the course and Joe Collins took great offence.
‘As lightning was dancing on the pavilion, I put my arm around Joe, and said: “Joe, you and I may get killed but let’s at least get the horses out”.
‘At the time, he didn’t see the logic of it but, 10 minutes later, the lightning and torrential rain stopped and Dance Design had won.’
For all his glories at Belmont, Melbourne, Ascot and the Curragh, no venue means more to Weld than Galway. After all, it’s where it started for him, when, as a callow kid, kid he led in the winner of the Galway Plate, Highfield Lad, trained by his father, Charlie Weld.
A few years later, in 1964, Weld persuaded his father to give him the ride on Ticonderoga in the Galway Amateur Handic a p and delivered. He was a day shy of his 16th birthday.
‘It’s always been a very lucky racetrack for me. Through my father, we al ways had strong connections with t he meeting. Since Ticonderoga, it went from there.’
Asked for the key to his stable’s enduring success, Weld allows himself a wry chuckle.
‘In the early days, it was very important for Irish owners to land a gamble,’ he admitted.
You always got better prices in Galway, the ring was stronger. It was the place to land a gamble. I was fortunate to land a few and that was a big help to my owners.’
When Weld began to expand, in terms of racing internationally, he still enjoyed Galway and began to run some of his better horses there, such as Go And Go, Grey Swallow and Dance Design. He did so for a reason.
‘ I realised that Galway is really a terrific test of a horse, more so than most tracks,’ he explained.
‘ Yo u need a number of factors to win there, stamina, speed and, in particular, courage. Up that hill from the dip, when a lot of horses see what’s ahead of them, they have second thoughts. So, you need a horse with a will to win.
‘Go And Go belonged to Moyglare Stud. He won the two-year- old maiden on the first evening and the following year won the Belmont Stakes [1990]. He remains the only non-American horse to win one of the legs of the Triple Crown,’ says Weld with undisguised pride.
I’m apolitical, I would have never gone inside any tent
‘Grey Swallow won the two-yearold maiden, went on to be the champion two-year-old and won the Irish Derby the following year.’
Weld’s strategy hasn’t been lost on other leading trainers and Aidan O’Brien has sent out two Breeders Cup winners and an Irish Derby winner who cut their teeth in Galway.
Pressed to name his stand- out moment at Galway, Weld pauses.
He is not short of options. While Ticonderoga will always be special, he recalls with affection the feat of Kiichi, which won a two-year- old maiden in Galway and came back three years later to win the Galway Plate.
Of all Weld’s Western wonders, it is Ansar who displayed that quality Weld reveres most in his horses; courage.
‘Ansar was wonderful to train and won seven times around Galway, on the flat, over hurdles and over fences. He won the Galway Hurdle and two Galway Plates. His second Plate success i s up there with Ticonderoga.’
Throughout the years, Weld has observed the changes in the Galway Races landscape and feels the meeting now is ‘back to where it was’.
As flesh, and probably envelopes too, were pressed in the infamous Fianna Fáil tents, and choppers buzzed about Ballybrit, Weld kept his distance.
‘ I’m apolitical and was never inside any tent,’ he says.
‘It was always a people’s meeting but maybe certain elements of society wanted to be involved more in it at a time. That gave the meeting an additional focus. They’re no longer involved and it’s gone back to a people’s meeting. I think this year will break all records,’ he predicts. WHEN Weld first tagged along with his father, the meeting was over three days.
Since 1971, when it was expanded to four, Galway has grown. The first five- day meeting was in 1974, a sixth day was added in ’84 and the white f l ag was r ai s ed on a week-long experience in 1999.
‘It’s an amazing week,’ says Weld. ‘You have different people coming in for different days of the week, which means there is a considerable changeover of attendance because of all the fresh people coming in at the weekend.’
If he chose, Weld could get caught up in Galway’s social whirl but, for him, work always comes first. It has to.
‘People forget, I have to go back and check on the horses; maybe trot out our horses the following morning to make sure they are sound,’ he points out.
‘You’re only as good as your last winner. I may win the last race on Thursday evening but I’ve to be at home working my horses the following morning before they leave for Galway.’
Weld has a ready-made excuse to celebrate his winners as his birthday falls each year at the Festival.
On Monday, he turns 65, an age when many folk put their feet up, but Weld won’t be tugging in the reins.
‘I’ve no intention of slowing down, no intention whatsoever.
I’m enjoying it way too much. Thank God, I’m fit and healthy,’ he says.
While one tent may have been folded up, Weld’s Galway gazebo will remain open in Ballybrit for many years to come.
Expect business to be as brisk as ever next week.