The sun came out on day two of the Galway Festival, justifying signs on the racecourse sweetshops: “Ice cream sold here.”
It was still a bit early for another advertised product, “flip-flops”, which you can’t usually buy in confectionery outlets but are also available here, under the counter, at €8 a pair. Yet the shop at the back of the grandstand had already sold 12 pairs since start of business Monday, and was expecting a boom in the coming days as more fashionable footwear takes its toll. “They’ll be begging for them by Thursday,” predicted the assistant.
Holding out for now was Sarah Louise Brogan from Rush, Co Dublin, whose racing finery included stiletto heels. A national schoolteacher in Coolock, she is also a noted Gaelic footballer with the St Maur’s club, and so has something in common with the film star Paul Mescal: finely-turned GAA ankles.
Her chosen footwear was more elegant than that one with which he made headlines recently, but it came at a price.
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“I’ll probably be buying flip-flops eventually,” she conceded, pointing to an also fashionable but tiny handbag that was too small for emergency backup shoes.
Sarah was with her friends Damien Boylan from Co Monaghan – they met on a J1 visa in Chicago where both were playing football – and Orla Cleary from Galway. But also present was her fiancé Féidhlim Murphy, with whom she got engaged this time last year, far from the Galway Races – in the Cayman Islands to be exact.
The couple will marry next Valentine’s Day. In the meantime, in true schoolteacher fashion, Sarah Louise double-checked that The Irish Times had spelt her future husband’s name right: “It’s F, e-fada, i, d, h…”.
Elsewhere in Ballybrit headwear of both the fashionable and the sun-protecting variety was also being heavily promoted at trackside stalls. Felt hats – de rigueur for horsey men – were on offer at €50 each (down from the usual €85 elsewhere, according to the assistant, although that’s not the traditional direction of prices during race week).
Straw hats were €20 each, although when a pair of elderly gentlemen inquired about buying two, the man behind the counter cheerfully discounted: “I can do it for €35 in cash.”
Out on the course there was an overseas winner in the opening race. A horse called Gale Mahler stormed to victory by 10 lengths, putting the “Brit” in Ballybrit on behalf of its Scottish owners and a trainer from Yorkshire.
On closer inspection the trainer turned out to be Adrian Keatley, an Irish exile formerly based in Kildare. “You always feel a bit vulnerable coming back here and taking on the likes of Willie (Mullins),” he admitted. “There’s a lot of satisfaction in winning.”
Overseas or not it was popular with those who had backed it at 9/2. These included a pair of 16-year-old high-rollers from Athenry who were obviously pleased to have cleared €15 with the trackside bookies, having backed the winner at “€2.50 each way”.
Tenors are a traditional feature of race week, by the way (a pair of local ones sang the National Anthem on day one). But fivers still have an honoured place here too, clearly.
Less lucky were a group of visiting Asian students studying at Galway Technical Institute. Daisy (her “western” name, she said) and Ellen from Taiwan, along with Jimin from South Korea, had never been at a race meeting before and were enjoying it so far. But trying to pick winners at Galway can be a bit of a jungle, as Daisy discovered. Her choice in the first race, Jungle Cove, finished last, a distant 36 lengths behind the winner.
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