Like soft rain, summer isn't summer in Ireland without the Galway Races. Catherine Foley finds out what makes them so special
Maybe it's the constant threat, and the ultimate arrival, of the rain. Maybe it's the presence of the fresh Atlantic breeze. It could be the momentum of the Galway Arts Festival. Whatever it is, the Galway Races has an unbeatable quality.
On Monday, the greatest race-meet of them all kicks off. The Galway Race Committee expects to attract 200,000 people. The Ballybrit Racecourse is in readiness. Ice production, we are told, started four months ago in readiness for the thousands who will consume some 12 tonnes in their drinks over the week.
It's a long way from iced drinks they started. The Galway Races is now in its 133rd year, but regular race-goers are convinced it has a special appeal no other race meeting has.
"You don't have to be interested in horse racing," says Séamus Brennan, Minister for Transport, who grew up in Salthill and hasn't missed a year since he was 14. "It ain't just a race meeting," he says. "It's a great big meeting place. That's what makes it special. It's a festival. An enormous amount of people who know nothing about racing go.
"It's held at the height of the summer, looking into Galway Bay in the capital of the west of Ireland. It's a kind of family occasion, and it's a festival more than most. It has the least number of serious punters in attendance."
It's a great social occasion where the mating game is played out in the open. It's where Fianna Fáil hold court and it's where 112 bookies are looking forward to taking €37 million in bets.
Charlie McCreevy, the Minister for Finance, has been going for the past 30 years and "never tires of it" because "it appeals to the widest racing audience in the country and is a place where people from every walk of life indulge themselves for a few days every year".
Bill Cullen, chairman of Renault Ireland and author of the autobiography about growing up in inner-city Dublin, It's a Long Way from Penny Apples, who goes each year with his wife, Jackie Lavin, echoes the sentiments. "It's the greatest cross-section of cultural life in the country, from Travelling people right up to the richest men in Ireland, and they all go out to meet and mix," he says. "It brings you back down to your roots."
He acknowledges the strong presence of Fianna Fáil, which has succeeded in putting "its stamp" on the Galway Races so that "it doesn't leave room for anyone else," he says. "Fianna Fáil have a huge tent. It's impossible to get a table there, there's such demand. You have to book a year in advance to get one. You meet everybody."
What he loves is being able to chat over a drink "with everybody from the Taoiseach to a great jarvey friend from Killarney. I don't know anywhere else in the world where you can chat in a public place like that with the Taoiseach". As for Ladies Day, well, he says, "it's even better than Ladies Day at the Dublin Horse Show".
John O'Donoghue, the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, has been going to the Galway Races "for the best part of 20 years" with his wife and family. "An Irish summer without the Galway Races would be like an Irish summer without the rain," he says. "You meet a lot of old friends, and there's a tremendous amount of conviviality and the racing is superb." Like the butter, he says, "it's part of what we are".
As for the Fianna Fáil marquee, "I was there before Fianna Fáil was," he asserts, as were "a lot of Fianna Fáil politicians", such as Joe Walsh, James McDaid, the Taoiseach and Charlie McCreevy.
"The fact that an awful lot of the prominent personalities in the party went to Galway, that in time led them into seeing an opportunity to help party funds. That led to the marquee, which proved to be a tremendous success. It attracted party supporters who would normally be attending the races anyway."
As for winning, O'Donoghue "gets so many tips for the one race, I get confused but there's always the hope that you'll get it back on Saturday. It's the place where you can always live in hope".
Another regular attender, Tánaiste Mary Harney says the races mark "the real beginning of the summer . . . because, of course, they coincide with the end of the political term".
Michael D. Higgins, the Labour TD for Galway West believes the races have changed over the years, with more local people attending the evening meets while the major days tend to be dominated by the major trainers. As to Fianna Fáil's presence: "A tent in the rain has nothing to do with the Galway Races. The mystique which surrounded the tent where people entered and disappeared may have evaporated because of the effect of the tribunals . . . It has more to do with the seedier side of financing the Fianna Fáil party," he says. "All of that stuff is quite peripheral to anything that has to do with four legs."
Galway Races summer festival meeting runs from July 29th to August 4th. Website: www.galwayraces.com