RACING:RAIN APPEARED to dampen punters willingness to pile into the bookies in a big way at Galway last evening and it also didn't do much for Dermot Weld's hopes of landing today's William Hill Plate with his Ballybrit specialist Ansar.
The 'Galway King' is hoping to secure a third Plate victory for Ansar but the 2004 and 2005 winner has a preference for quick ground conditions that don't look likely to come up in the €240,000 highlight.
"You would have to say his chance has been reduced with all this rain that we've had. It's soft now," admitted Weld who saddled a potential future star last night as Rare Ransom ran out a seven-length winner of the juvenile fillies maiden.
She was impressive enough to earn a quote of 20 to 1 from Ladbrokes for next year's 1,000 Guineas and Weld said: "This filly is very progressive and we can look forward to maybe going right to the top with her."
More immediately Weld also described Monday's GPT winner Majestic Concorde as being only "50-50" to run in tomorrow's featured Guinness Galway Hurdle.
Majestic Concorde is as low as 5 to 1 favourite to earn a €50,000 bonus by doubling up but the trainer reported: "I'll make my mind up in the morning. He had a hard race on Monday and he was a bit tired afterwards. I'll see about Majestic Concorde, but Bobs Pride definitely runs."
The conditions seemed to impact on yesterday's crowd figure with a drop of over four thousand on the corresponding figure last year to a total of 22,282.
But there was an even more dramatic fall off in betting with the bookmakers. Last night's total of €2,128,027 was down almost €1 million on the 2007 figure. In comparison the Tote turnover of €1,145,034 was only marginally down by almost €150,000.
Celtic Dane was a well-backed 7 to 1 winner of last night's feature race, the €160,000 Tote Mile, under jockey Chris Hayes for trainer Kevin Prendergast.
