On a day when bright − and sometimes blinding − colours took centre stage in Galway, it would have been entirely predictable that the winner of the first race at the Ballybrit Racecourse would be Pink in the Park, even if the Wille Mullins trained horse hadn’t been the hot favourite.
Kimberly Mushayabasa didn’t consider herself a hot favourite for the Ladies Day crown and cash that was up for grabs. But as she headed for the registration desk bedecked in mix of blues, greens, yellows and a crystal handbag she’d made herself, the Kells woman was “quietly confident”, although nervous that while “the ladies out here have been preparing for months, I put my outfit together in a few days”.
The outfit of Yvonne O’Toole from Birr, Co Offaly, was much longer in the planning, with the dress, which looked like it might have been doused in ink from a fluorescent orange marker, bought for a wedding seven years ago. .
As she stood by the parade ring she pointed to a woman wearing equally fluorescent green trousers nearby. “If we found someone wearing white we could be a really bright Irish flag,” she noted.
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Neither she or Mushayabasa took the best-dressed crown in the end, with the honour going to Davinia Knight from Portarlington who walked away in a cool black ensemble and with a cooler 10 grand.
Hats were big business for a frazzled-looking Lorraine McCallister. She didn’t have much time for chat as she raced around her stall trying to find hats for ladies who had come out to Ballybrit with shamefully naked heads.
“The big thing later on will be the flip flops,” she said, pointing to a display of black-and-white flip flops that would make an RTÉ executive swoon. She was planning to sell them for €15 a pop. “They are going to be a big success,” she predicted.
As she spoke, there was a commotion under the main stand caused by a bouquet of Roses − if that’s the collective noun for the 17 Rose of Tralee contestants having a day out organised by Galway Rose Deirdre Jennings. The social worker was beside herself with the excitement of it all. “I absolutely can’t wait for the end of the month,” she said. “This has been one of our first outings and I have to say everyone seems to be lovely and it is going to be brilliant.”
Sarah Brotherwood was in Galway for a hen party but made it her business to come racing to see for herself the stomping ground of her horse Oathkeeper.
She got the horse − once owned by JP McManus no less − during Covid times after he retired from the big time, swapping the racecourses of Ireland for life on a dairy farm in Herefordshire. “He took a while to settle alright,” she said. “He was totally out of his environment. If you walked him through here now he’d be great but when we walked him through a flock of sheep he was like ‘what the f**k?’”
Not called Oathkeeper for nothing, then.
Brotherwood was delighted, having had two winners in the first three races and a list of tips from a friend for the rest of the day. She whispered Kings Hill in the Guinness Galway Hurdle and when The Irish Times asked if we should put our house on it, she nodded.
[ Galway races 2024: A local’s guide to where to eat and drinkOpens in new window ]
Nurburgring, ridden by JJ Slevin and trained by Joseph O’Brien, romped home, with poor Kings Hill left some way off the pace and this writer just a little poorer and cursing the word of strangers.
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