It is 50 years since Dermot Weld's love-affair with the Galway festival began and the 2014 start of Ireland's most unique racing festival can prove the feelings are still strong and mutual.
A day before his 16th birthday in 1964, Weld rode Ticonderoga to win Galway’s big amateur prize which will be the €70,000 centrepiece of this evening’s card. It was a headline achievement at the time, but ultimately has proved to be a mere prelude to history.
Eight years later Weld trained his first winner at a festival he has substantially helped make world famous. There have been 263 more since, including a mind-boggling 17 victories in 2011 alone. The trainer, famed worldwide as a racing pioneer, has been leading trainer 27 times at a local event that has possibly defined him most at home.
More than 150,000 are expected to attend the upcoming seven days at Ballybrit which are worth
in excess of €2 million in prize money and which will generate above €12 million in betting turnover on-track alone. But as it was in 1964, Galway is again all about Weld, even to the multitude that will turn up with only a vague suspicion that a meeting is going on.
What’s different this time is a perception that a spectacularly successful season up to now might result in the King of Ballybrit raiding the west with less ammunition primed to fire as in previous years.
Weld has saddled 58 winners worth almost €1.3 million. At a 25 per cent strike rate that trumps even Aidan O’Brien who has had 61 winners in Ireland. The argument goes that the man whose ability to plan for Galway is legendary might have shot his bolt for the week ahead. Significantly, it’s an argument that bookmakers are dismissing with miserly 7 to 4 quotes about Weld saddling between 14 and 16 winners.
There doesn’t appear to be any shortage of ammunition today with seven runners from Rosewell House and 41 entries over the following three days alone. Fact is the Weld team are continuing to fire on all cylinders with a single runner at Wexford on Saturday, which drifted like a barge in the betting, still managing to win.
Since it is anniversary time in the featured Connacht Hotel Handicap, Weld will be even more anxious to win with either of his two runners, Pay Day Kitten and Grecian Tiger.
But he is represented in all bar one race and it is the spread of runners that looks to deflect any lingering concerns there might be around Galway about a light armoury.
The special status enjoyed by the trainer this week will probably be highlighted most in an opening novice hurdle where he saddles a horse that has never run over jumps but which is still likely to dominate the betting scenario.
Manhattan Swing is a 90-rated runner on the flat and whereas the lack of experience against the likes of proven hurdle winners Henry Higgins, Polished Rock and McKinley would normally leave punters wary, the fact he lines up at all and in a race Weld has won in three of the last four years, is significant.
A couple of three-year-olds having their first handicap starts won’t be missed either, especially Bobby’s Heart
who will relish better ground while point-to-point winner Call Vinnie can be a major player in the bumper.
A Weld runner in the opening juvenile maiden is always to be feared. But the reality is that Postulation has a couple of lengths to make up on his Ballydoyle rival Jamaica from their Curragh debut and that was a performance full of promise by the Galileo colt.
