Galway track conditions proving hard to predict ahead of next week’s festival

On the back of a heatwave Galway officials now have to keep fingers firmly crossed that rainfall forecasts are correct ahead of next week’s festival action.

Ground conditions at Ballybrit are currently “good” on the National Hunt course and “good to yielding” on the flat track.

However, after unprecedently hot weather forced extensive watering in recent weeks, up to 18ml of rain is currently forecast over this weekend.

It leaves authorities with a delicate balancing act as to continue watering or not before the start of seven days at the renowned meeting on Monday.

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“We have held back on the watering in the last couple of days, not necessarily in expectation of that rain, but we were conscious we didn’t want to overdo it either. We definitely want a cushion in the ground,” Galway’s chief executive Michael Moloney said on Friday.

“There’s lots of moisture in the ground and if we get that rain it will make a lovely job of it. If it doesn’t come, we’ll probably have to do some manual irrigation.

“We are aiming for something similar to where we are. But if we got more rain, if we got 20-25ml on top of watered ground, it could ease a bit more. It’s very hard to predict. A lot can happen between here and Monday,” he said.

Moloney also said it is hard to gauge what crowd levels will be like next week as Galway tries to buck a trend of sliding attendance figures this year.

Horse Racing Ireland statistics for the first half of 2022 show a 9 per cent dip in overall crowd figures to 505,752 attendees compared to the same period in 2019.

Galway has long been the most popular summer festival although attendances have slipped since the Celtic Tiger peak with a total of almost 130,000 racegoers overall in 2019.

“Obviously, sporting events are back but talking to everybody, everyone’s telling me we’re going to produce records, I don’t see that. It’s a very unusual year, very hard to know,” Moloney said.

The 2019 festival saw a rare boost for on-course bookmakers with betting turnover of €6.8 million over the seven days, which was an increase of more than €460,000 on the previous year.

Any momentum from that was disrupted by the Covid pandemic and HRI’s half-yearly statistics also show overall on-course bookmaker turnover so far in 2022 has fallen by 10.3 per cent on 2019.

The Galway action starts on Monday evening with the €110,000 Connacht Hotel Handicap featuring.