Shark Hanlon, Jordan Gainford and owner T J McDonald celebrate Hewick's Galway Plate win© Photo Healy Racing
Galway manager Michael Moloney expressed himself as ‘absolutely delighted with the week’ as the seven-day marathon racing Festival came to a close at a sunny Ballybrit this afternoon.
Moloney said, “It’s great to have racegoers back and we are really happy with the way the week has gone. People are delighted to be back and with the facilities on offer.
“We had two bad days weather wise on Friday evening and Saturday. We had over 24,000 here on Friday when it rained all evening and people still had a chance to enjoy themselves with more indoor facilities.
“We are in the west of Ireland and we are trying to build and work on having facilities that can cope with big numbers.
“I’m absolutely delighted with the week. We always knew it was going to be difficult to get back and get going again (following two years of covid restrictions) and we have something really good to build on.
“Anyone that has come here has been impressed and are going away happy with the facilities.
Moloney was also delighted with the spread of winners on the track throughout the week.
“It’s great see Shark Hanlon winning two features throughout the week and there has been a great number of trainers that have won over the week. They are all going home with good prizemoney as well.”
The total attendance for the week was 116,720 with 13,240 turning out for this afternoon’s Family Day which was nicely up on the 9,988 figure of the Sunday meeting in 2019.
With covid restrictions in place for the previous two years, 2019 is the most recent year to draw a reasonable comparison and the total attendance that year was 129,058.
The Friday evening session produced the biggest attendance of the week at 24,486, although this figure was 6,337 less than the corresponding day in 2019.
Willie Mullins won the top trainer award for the seventh successive year with eight winners, while his son Patrick completed a notable family double as the leading National Hunt rider with four wins.
The pair teamed up to land the Monday evening feature, the Connacht Hotel QR Handicap, with Echoes In Rain.
Shane Foley landed the Pat Smullen Memorial Trophy as the top Flat jockey with five winners.
