Galway Race Festival 2003 launch. The Galway Race Committee announced yesterday, plans for the biggest and best ever Galway Race Festival, which will run from Monday, July 28th to Sunday August 3rd, 2003. The festival will this year attract more than 200,000 visitors to 51 sponsored races with a record total of €1.5 million in prize money. The Hewlett-Packard Galway Plate is worth €150,000 this year and the Guinness Galway Hurdle has prize money of €170,000. Both contribute to making it the largest prize fund for national hunt racing during the summer season. According to John Coyle, Chairman of Galway Race Committee 'the Summer Festival at Galway is the flagship for Irish racing in the country and it´s contribution to racing both from an image point of view and financially is enormous'. There is a guaranteed jackpot of €70,000 on the Wednesday and Thursday of the festival, with a minimum of €40,000 on Monday, Tuesday and Friday. €30,000 on Saturday and €25,000 on Sunday. Plans are underway to invest €1.2 milllion in a new entrance building to incorporate a new weighrooin, administration office and turnstiles at the parade ring entrance. The work will commence after the October races and will be completed in June 2004. Vehicle access has again been improved for this year´s festival with an extra lane being added at the Parkmore entrance. Once on the course, visitors will be guaranteed excellent views of all of the race action with four big screens strategically located. 'The Galway Races is all about enjoyment', said John Coyle. 'Whether you´re a seasoned racegoer or just along for the fun, we have endeavoured to provide all of the facilities to make the races as enjoyable as possible. We have invested more than €22 million in track facilities over the past decade. This has created the highest quality visitor experience of any racecourse in Britain or Ireland and has resulted in the award of Racecourse of the Year 2002 sponsored by The Irish Star'.Speaking at the launch, Racecourse Manager John Moloney said 'Each year we have added exciting new developments to the Galway Races, including this years addition of a woodchip canter down to deliver horses to the 2 mile and 7 furlong starts, which will help enormously to protect the racecourse. We are again looking forward to record visitor numbers to the festival as well as giving these visitors a real Galway welcome. I would like to thank all of our sponsors and the Committee members, as well as Horse Racing Ireland for their generous support. We should also not forget all the people who work tireleesly throughout the year behind the scenes. Overall, this has enabled us to create Ireland´s premier racing festival.'
