Michael Moloney This is a very exciting week for us all at Galway Races and these are the seven days that the entire year revolves around but we are very lucky that this event is building on the success year in, year out and an awful lot of stuff is the same. We have a fantastic team of 10 permanent staff and they really drive the whole festival and then from about March onwards you start taking on additional people and then into June and July you would have around 200 people on site getting things ready. The majority of those people have all worked on site before and they keep coming back every year and seem to love it. During this week itself we would have 1500 people working on track and among those are people who have done it for 30 or 40 years and they love being part of it so that certainly makes my life much easier. From July time we kind of go into a little bubble here and it is difficult to get a proper grasp of how popular this event is. I live on site at the racecourse so there is often periods of three or four days that might pass at this time of year and I wouldn’t even get outside the gates. Some people have mentioned to me that the coverage and build up is massive but we are so focussed on getting everything ready that sometimes you don’t even notice that but it is very pleasing to hear. I have read a couple of bits and pieces about trainers getting ready for Galway and minding their horses for this week and that popularity and quality has been built up over many years. People love to walk into the winners enclosure here and to the cheers they get. It might not be the highest rated race in the world but there is something very special about a winner at Ballybrit. If you see a local winner here the atmosphere is huge and it is brilliant to have people target that but you also have some of the bigger trainers who like to have huge teams of horses here this week and their owners are also investing a lot of money into our sport and we are very lucky to have them. The entries were huge and the declarations for the opening two days indicate that we are set to have very competitive racing right throughout the week. Our sponsors have been a huge part of that and they have obviously helped us get to record prize money of over €2m on offer during the week and a feature race of at least €100,000 every day. Another thing we’ve looked to do this year is to improve it at the other end of the scale as well and the minimum value of the races here has gone from €15,000 to €17,000. We’ve got 52 races and they are all fully sponsored and the majority are returning sponsors but with that we’ve a lovely mix of local sponsors as well and we work hand in hand with the city to put on a good show for anyone that is coming for the week. We’ve had a bit of rain over the last few days but in the middle of that we’ve had some real drying days and the ground is in great nick. Gerry Broderick, our course foreman, does a great job with his team and considering the very dry spell we’ve had I think everyone that comes here this week will agree that the track is in super condition. It has been a difficult here with a very wet winter and it turned into a very hot summer but they’ve worked late into the night right through May and June to keep on top of it and it has all paid off. When I was taking over managing the racecourse from my dad, John, the pressure was off straight away because of the team that is involved here. We are always looking to build on the success that John and the Race Committee have had here over the last 20 years and the opening of our new €6m development is a fantastic facility. We are always looking to improve things and people coming racing this week will see a lot of tweaks and changes around the course and I think you’ve got to keep driving forward to keep people coming back. We are very lucky to get a huge mix of attendance from people barely out of the pram to people in their elder years, you can bring your kids, your friends and it is great to have an event that has such a wide ranging popularity. Myself and all the staff here feel very fortunate to be part of that.
