Crowds hold up well at 2011 Galway Festival

The 2011 Galway Festival will forever be remembered as the year Dermot Weld blitzed his own records on the track with an amazing 17 winners over the week. However the Galway management can also be pleased as the total attendance at the seven-day meeting reached 146,847.

The crowd figure was just 2.6% down on 12 months ago, which is a very good result in the current tough economic climate. Nearly 43,000 attended on Thursday's hugely popular Ladies Day.

However betting with the Tote and bookmakers dropped more significantly over the week. The Tote aggregate was down on all seven days compared with a year ago, with the final tally of €5,004,776 showing a 13.2% drop.

The bookmakers turnover was just under 10% down on the week with a total of €11,818,890 bet in the ring. An interesting trend in the ring was that comparative figures with 2010 improved as the week went on. For the first three days bookmaker turnover was down quite sharply against a year ago but that gradually changed to such a degree that both Saturday and Sunday showed an increase this year. Perhaps successful Dermot Weld followers were reinvesting their winnings!

Weld was obviously the bane of most bookmakers, with Brian Graham saying, “17 winners for Dermot Weld was no good for us. However in my opinion it is not as competitive out on the track as it was a few years ago, and consequently it is not as competitive in the betting ring. You could always lay three or four in a race here in years gone by, whereas now you can often only lay one. You can't make a book in these races, and you either take the one on or you don't.”

“The volume of bets has been good this week, and I would say the amount of tickets we are doing is on a par with last year. But the turnover is down a bit,” added Graham.

Ladbrokes' Daragh Fitzpatrick said their turnover was not lower this week but that this was down to “a few high rollers”. “We have a few high rollers that have maintained our turnover but without them it would have collapsed. The ordinary punter is still there but they are just having less on.”

Like Brian Graham, Fitzpatrick pointed to the unlucky defeat of heavily-backed 6/4 favourite Along Came Casey on Friday evening as a pivotal race over the week. “We were very happy to get her beat,” Fitzpatrick revealed with a broad smile.

Galway Manager John Moloney was very happy with the attendance figures over the week saying, “We are down under 4,000 on last year's total which is very good considering the current economic climate. The betting is down a bit but nearly 17 million has been bet in total on the week which is still some amount. The builders who were betting well a few years ago are unfortunately not around now.”

Galway is always looking to improve facilities and add to the racecourse experience for patrons. This year a large covering in the parade ring helped give shelter from the odd shower, while traffic management is continually tweaked to provide quick access and exit from the track.

“We developed a new pedestrian lane-way to get people in and out of the centre of the track and that worked well,” said Moloney.

Reflecting on the racing action, Moloney added, “The Galway Hurdle was a great race and the scenes afterwards in the parade ring were amazing. I thought there were 107 people in the syndicate and not seven, and it seemed like half of Kilkenny was here. It was great.”

“D K (Dermot Weld) of course was also another highlight. He produces his horses in great condition here every year but this year he's really surpassed himself,” he added.

Alan Magee