The bets are on, the crowd is cheering, but the start of the Arklow Pig Derby is delayed because the runners are scouring the surface of Main Street for food. Yes, the five entrants in the Festival Handicap Chase are fanned out across the road, snouts to the floor like the nozzles of vacuum cleaners, oblivious to the surrounding noise of Arklow en fete. Each of them about 35 lbs of prime pork, with no ambition in life except to become 36 lbs of prime pork as soon as possible.
And who can blame them? Even crack pig athletes don't get much respect. Thirty-five lbs of prime pork will always sound more like a catering order than a form guide, and the fact that the impending race is sponsored by the town's pork butcher is as good a reason as any for a boycott.
Soon, however, responding to some friendly urgings from behind, the piggies suspend their foraging and break into a forward trot. They skitter along Main Street for 30 yards with something bordering on enthusiasm; but just as similarities with greyhound racing are becoming apparent, they all stop short of the finish line for another bout of vacuum cleaning. Indeed, it is a feature of pig racing that the winning tape is a thing to be avoided at all costs. It may be something in the porcine folk memory, but the outcome of the first race is left hanging in the balance while the bonhams sniff the ground and the air and each other for signs of danger. The pig tribunal finally ends when competitor number two investigates the chalk of the finishing line and is declared the winner by a nose.
"Pig in a Poke" as she is known - whose form until now had been streaky - is returned at three to one by the bookmaker, on loan from the local Paddy Power's shop. The betting is run on the tote system - 50p a ticket - and it demonstrates yet again the Irish propensity for gambling on anything that moves. Sane people who start out investing 50p for a laugh are quickly reduced to zealots shouting "Shift yer arse, number three, ye useless b***** ye" as the race progesses. Or doesn't, as the case usually is.
By the end of the second race things have taken a turn for the surreal, with a radio reporter attempting to record the winner's victory grunts. The pig's handler holds him up to the mike and and the victor is encouraged - like Ned Beatty in the film Deliverance - to "squeal like a piggy". He refuses pig-headedly to make noise of any kind, and is happily spared any further ado (which is more than can be said for Ned Beatty).
As with all sporting events in which animals are unwilling participants, there are those who think pig racing may be cruel. The lobby peaked two years ago when, according to locals, a female protester threw herself in the path of one of the races. But there is still a slight reticence evident among the handlers: and the owner of the pigs - they all come from the same farm - is nowhere to be seen.
There were no Emily Pankwursts or any other protesters this year and, really, there is little about which to protest. The pigs are given kid glove treatment and, even if the same five pigs are required to run all the races, their efforts on behalf of the Arklow street cleaning department suggest they are unfazed by the effort or the crowd noise.
They don't improve much with practice, however. The third and final race threatens to turn into a fiasco when, inches from the line, the pigs hold their by-now traditional meeting to consider the situation, and this time decide on a full-scale retreat.
In the act of turning, however, number five - the most athletically-challenged member of the field - careers across the line backwards. This shock result causes a handsome four to one pay-out for those who backed it; and because the calculation of odds is not completely scientific, comes as something of a sickener for the bookies.
But inquiries about the latter's profit margins are firmly rebuffed. "That's classified information," says Josephine Birthistle as she hands the cash box over to the festival treasurer. The profits will help to defray the overall costs of the Arklow Garden of Ireland Festival, now in its 14th year and of which the pig derbies are an integral part. The pigs, meanwhile, are loaded back in their truck, having done their bit for the great Pig-Olympian motto: "Higher, faster, stronger, rasher".
