SIDELINE CUT:Queuing up for a choc-ice or a pint of plain is the heart of the Galway Races

GALWAY RACE Week is no longer decadent and depraved. There were signs this week the old meeting had returned to what it was before it became hijacked by the gold-diggers and money-spinners over the past decade: a comical meeting of Town and Country.

On Thursday – Ladies Day – Ballybrit was transformed into what might have been a huge school Debs for people of all ages. The mode of transport to the races has gone back to its roots as well. A few years back, the sky around Ballybrit had more traffic than Heathrow as helicopters transported the absurd and beautiful from various city hotels to a field on the edge of the race course from where they would hoof it in heels, frocks and best suits to the Fianna Fáil tent or the private rooms.

This week, the occasional helicopter soared over the course but they looked lonely up there. They looked kind of pathetic.

Once, when Dublin played Leitrim down in Carrick-on-Shannon in the Championship, a chopper descended on Seán McDermott Park announcing the presence of someone pretty important. It turned out to be the then leader of our nation, Mr Patrick Bartholomew Ahern.

A few minutes later, Bertie materialised in the press box, watched the Dubs and spent half-time in the kitchen chatting with the ladies who made the tea. He ate a bun or two, may have cracked a self-deprecating joke about piling on the pounds and did such a deft job of mixing with the people he managed to make the idea of travelling by helicopter seem somehow humble.

Creating the illusion of humbleness was Bertie’s genius, and at sports events nobody could do it like him. But few Irish people can pull off something as extravagant as travelling by chopper as Bertie could. This is because deep down they are probably uncomfortable with the idea and thus feel like douche-bags – and it shows.

This week, grounded in every sense, the vast majority opted for the slow grind of the roads out to Ballybrit or stood in the interminable line for taxis or packed into the buses that ran to and from town all day.

There is something gloriously daft about the idea of thousands of people getting dolled up for a race festival that remains obstinately country-ish: for sure, you can go stand in the champagne tent and lush down fizzy plonk and maybe spot someone whose face you think you know but just can’t place and decide eventually that they used to be in Fair City for a while. But queuing up for a choc-ice or a pint of plain is closer to the heart of the Galway Races.

I remember last year watching various Irish celebrities being interviewed about what was the attraction of the Galway Races. The best was Ryan Tubridy. The RTÉ man is precisely the kind of person ordinary folk expect to see at the races. It has never been about attracting international celebrities.

Having J-Lo or Tom Cruise standing beside you in the Long Bar would be off-putting. Rugby stars, television personalities – that’s the kind most Irish people like to see at the Galway Races, the people whom they read about in the Sunday Independent and occasionally see on The Late Late Show. Tubs is perfect Galway Races-distinguished-guest material, although last year was his first visit. And in fairness to the man, he appeared to be loving it, confessing he had collected his “books and other nerdy materials” for his visit to Clifden and had been invited to the Races.

He pointed out that the ladies looked terrific, the men dashing and that he was looking forward to a few scoops, then looked at his watch and remarked: “It’s nearly beer o’clock!” You can get away with that when you present The Late Late Show; say it in a pub in east Galway and you run the risk of getting beaten up.

And Tubs admitted that, as far as the equine side of things was concerned, he was in the dark.

“Horses, Schmorses,” he explained.

I am not sure if the phrase will ever adorn the entrance to Ballybrit, but the television man has a point. When you get down to it, the Galway Races is pretty much Horses, Schmorses for everyone. Who really knows anything about horse racing? Even those who know a hell of a lot about it admit that more often than not they are bamboozled by the lapses in form and unpredictable failures of the sure things they have backed down the years.

It doesn’t matter how precious the tip: in the maelstrom of the race anything can happen and what usually happens is your horse doesn’t win.

There is a reason JP McManus is such an enigmatic figure: making your fortune on backing horses is a rare feat. It is rarer than summiting Mount Everest.

But what the Galway Races offers is the universal opportunity to pretend to be a racing tycoon for an afternoon.

Anyone you meet has a tip and it is invariably different and generally wrong. Punters strain for a look at the horses in the parade ring convinced that by quickly scanning the passing flesh they can judge its form. And as for the bookmakers, well, everyone is reduced to childhood when faced with the speed and patter of those odds-and-evens merchants and the dexterity with which they whip notes out of punters’ hands and magic them into their big black medical satchels and produce a white slip that may just hold your fortune. Transaction sealed and delivered.

There is no better fun than just standing and watching race-goers placing their bets in those hectic minutes before the race, innocents all, intoxicated by the smell of money. For the duration of the race everyone can believe the horse is somehow “theirs”, and on the serendipitous occasions when your horse happens to cross the line first there comes that faint, fleeting feeling of omnipotence, like Basil Fawlty blowing kisses to God when Dragonfly came in for him; that sense that, having come out tops for once, you are winning and on top of the world.

“One of the few legal highs left,” one man said of the result reversal of the 3pm that placed Luttrell Lady in first and he rummaged around in his pockets before finding his crumpled winning slip.

Like all highs, it passes quickly. By six o’clock on Thursday the annual exodus from Ballybrit had begun. There was not a chopper in sight and the traffic was chaotic. It was an old-style Irish summer traffic jam.

Soon, the absence of the infamous Fianna Fáil tent won’t even be commented upon. Somehow the Galway Races became symbolic of the new wealthy and that obscured the fact that it remained, underneath, what it had been for the previous 150 years: a people’s festival.

By tonight, the madness will be over for another year but, by the looks of things, Ballybrit will sing on for another 150 Julys.