’The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
‘To talk of many things:
Of shoes – and ships – and sealing wax –
Of cabbages – and kings –
And why the sea is boiling hot –
And whether pigs have wings.’
NINE times out of ten you would have to say that Lewis Carroll was on the money. But Galway Week is that one in ten, marking the climax of what has so far been a great summer, a welcome contrast to the three preceding washouts.
Even as this is written you can take a price about your fancy for the Galway Plate or the Galway Hurdle, the two enduring highlights of the annual Ballybrit Bonanza. The Plate was first staged in 1869, the Hurdle coming into being in 1913. The railway company’s offer of free passage for runners from all over the country ensured plenty of entries, notably from the ‘Short Grass’ of the Thoroughbred County. Indeed, the first four runnings of the Galway Plate saw that coveted prize borne back to the Curragh, the sequence started by the Bell family. They combined as owner, trainer and jockey to land the spoils with Absentee, following up with Belle in 1872.
Over 90 years elapsed before Curragh trainer Kevin Bell reckoned he could revive his family’s connection with Bunclody Tiger, dodgy lepper though he was. Imagine, then, Kevin’s seraphic smile on being informed by the stewards that heavy ground had obliged them to omit those trappy final two fences in the Mooneen. Kevin and owner Andy Redmond put their betting boots on. Bunclody Tiger and Tommy Browne duly did the rest. And the champagne flowed. Henry Eyre Linde of Eyrefield Lodge then took up the baton on behalf of Curragh trainers, winning the Galway Plate seven times between 1876 and 1895, racking up a hat-trick with Nightfall, Sugar Plum and Ventriloquist, each ridden by one of the celebrated Beasley brothers from neighbouring Eyrefield House.
The Cullen brothers – Galwegians to their core – trained on the Curragh, initially in partnership and then as independent entities. They combined to win the Plate with Erin’s Star in 1885. Thereafter Willie Cullen won it twice more as a rider and three times as a trainer. Fred Cullen did even better, his tally of five including Tipperary Boy, still the only horse ever to win the Plate three times.
Then the Curragh stranglehold weakened, largely due to the repeated successes of Harry Ussher and Maxie Arnott, both based in County Dublin. Harry accounted for eight Plates between 1910 and 1945, while Maxie carried off the famous trophy five times in the same era. Paddy Sleator subsequently entered the fray, carting off the trophy to his Grangecon fastness on a record nine occasions, starting with Silent Prayer in 1948 and winding up with O’Leary almost 30 years later. ‘Phonsie’ O’Brien weighed in too in the early 1960s, successful four years running with Carraroe, Blunts Cross and then twice with Ross Sea.
In recent years the Curragh claim has been revived by Dessie Hughes, Dermot Weld and Michael O’Brien, who have had to cope with an increased English challenge, which has become more and more effective since the English did away with their summer break from the jumping game. English trainers can now keep their horses in racing trim for raids on Ballybrit, whereas previously they could only do so by running them on the flat in the weeks leading up to the Galway jamboree.
Any notion that Curragh trainers have fared better in the Galway Hurdle is overturned by a glance down the columns of the Sweeney Guide to the Irish Turf. Maxie Arnott bagged the first two Hurdles. Indeed, were it not for the Dawsons of Rathbride Manor and JJ Parkinson of Maddenstown Lodge, ‘Headquarters’ would have virtually drawn blank until Dermot Weld began his love affair with Ballybrit in the early 1970s. And even Dermot – for all his repeated plunder of Ballybrit bounty – has only put his name on the Hurdle with Spanner (1975), Strathline (1985) and the remarkable Galway specialist Ansar in 2001.
If there is any moral to be drawn from the above it can only parallel that which is so frequently and expensively ignored by Irish punters at Cheltenham. It is about the heart ruling the head, whereby the idea becomes ingrained that Curragh horses must be superior to any trained down the country. Pat Hughes and myriad Mullinses have all too often demonstrated the folly of that. Good luck in your battles with the Ballybrit bookies.