Galway Summer Race Festival
(Monday 28 July - Sunday 3 August)
Throughout Ireland people of all ages and occupations prepare for the Galway Races with a fervour that is almost religious in its intensity. Budgets are planned, holidays are arranged and business is scheduled to conform with the sacrosanct dates of the annual week-long festival.
More significantly, perhaps, commemorative coups are prepared, often with horses that have abstained reverentially from victory for the obligatory twelve months. Horses will piously avail of the special dispensation permitting them to triumph twice in the one week at this exceptional venue.
On Monday, traditionally the opening evening, the turnstiles begin to rotate and the devotional crowds stream in regardless of prevailing economic or meteorological constraints. Mohair suits, elegant silks and clerical collars commingle spontaneously with cloth caps, braces (suspenders) and stout brown boots.
As the familiar strains of 'The Galway Races' resound from the loudspeakers, the emphasis is decidedly on camaraderie and merriment. Profit may be a significant motive; but the real profit is measured not in euros but in pints, not in coups but in craic.
Old friendships are renewed, gossip is exchanged and tips are divulged in penitential whispers. Men and women who would ordinarily spurn the racing pages are suddenly privy to 'inside information'; and the bookmakers are dutifully thankful.
The weather in the west of Ireland may be notoriously changeable, but Galway race-goers are oblivious of even the most torrential downpour. Disdaining rain coats or umbrellas, many of them seek casual shelter under the elfin awning of the peaked cap or the printed headscarf.
On my first visit to the Galway Race Festival, I watched incredulously as men in bespoke suits and women in designer dresses stood in pouring rain while calmly trying to separate the compacted pages of their sodden race-cards.
One worthy devotee, with the demeanour of a belted earl, strode contemptuously through the driving rain in a grey lightweight suit; his only concession to the weather - a pair of Roches Stores carrier bags pulled up over his shoes and secured at the ankles by two hastily tied knots.
'The apparel oft proclaims the man', wrote the Bard of Avon. Shakespeare would surely have loved the Galway Races where 'all the men and women are truly players'.
RTE's Jim Fahy at the Galway Races
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