Richie Galway You couldn’t have made last week, it was too far-fetched to believe. From Tuesday’s mishap with Paul Townend to him going out the following day having a treble and then the two greatest female jockeys of all time bowing out with winners in professional races, there was just stories, highlights and incidents across the week that made it a festival that we will remember for a long, long time. This was my 20th Punchestown Festival and there are highlights every year but to be brutally honest I was very vary of 2017 and the quality of racing and tight finishes we had there and I just thought that would be very hard to follow. I didn’t think we’d get to those heights but we surpassed them last week. You wonder straight away, where do you go next year but this game, at the moment, seems to have the ability to throw up surprises and superstars every day so no doubt next year will find a level too. A couple of things are worth mentioning and the La Touche is a race that amazes me every year. They race over four miles, a furlong and 100 yards and with the exception of Risk Of Thunder and a few other years there is rarely ever any more than a head or a neck between the first two. It is one of the most exciting races every year. For Paul Townend to come out on Wednesday and win on his first ride back and I thought it was a credit to the Irish race-going public to how they reacted and the reception Paul got when he came back. I thought it said a lot about the people that go racing in this country. We are lucky to be living in an era to be watching greatness every day. Willie, Gordon and all their respective teams, it is just a record breaking era that will go down in history. The Punchestown Festival is a number of things now. The focus and core value is championship racing. The first festival I started at was worth £500,000 and last week was worth over €3m in prizemoney with 12 Grade 1’s and the best horses in Ireland and the British Isles. But it has also become a very slick hospitality venue and to some degree towards the weekend it has become a rock concert and we have to cater for all of these elements that people require when looking for a day out. The addition and improvement of facilities has been integral to the success of the place and last week we just brought it to a new level with the opening of the new Hunt Stand. We tend to get the older racegoers early in the week, you get the younger social crowd on Thursday and Friday and we get the next generation on Saturday. From a Punchestown point of view the Saturday is the most satisfying day as we welcomed nearly 36,000 people there last Saturday and we created and established that day off a very low base. To see kids enjoying horses and racing, which is integral to our national identity, its hugely satisfying. In a few years time they’ll be putting on their suit or dress to go to the races on the Friday and the growth that has shown is phenomenal. At every opportunity Dick O’Sullivan will always reference the strength of the team at Punchestown and he deflects praise to all of the team but Dick has created, nurtured and motivated the team that he has. He’s a special man to work with and he allows everybody to play their part. From a difficult position, for him to see the culmination of the Hunt Stand and a festival like that, Punchestown is lucky to have him at the helm. We’ve already commenced reviews of last week, we’ll let the dust settle and review all elements in detail from a race programme point of view, to entertainment, hospitality, bars, car parks, everything will be forensically reviewed to see where we can improve things next year to enhance the festival again. But I hope it will be tweaks rather than any major changes. One thing that does make my life an awful lot easier is when we don’t have to water and it makes it so much more straightforward on the track but credit to Sean Ryan and Brendan Sheridan who I worked closely with in the track preparation. It gives us extra satisfaction that we had so much positive feedback about how the track looked and how it is prepped. Sean takes great pride in how it is presented and once we don’t have to water it takes one variable out of the mix that we don’t have to worry about. There is never a dull moment around here and even though our biggest week isn’t even a week behind us yet, we now look ahead to 2019 and see what we can do from our side to make sure it is as enjoyable for everyone as this year was.
