Ballybrit is all set to host the cheltenham of the summer

IT’S also been called the Royal Ascot of the West of Ireland! And not only for Ladies Day; every day at the annual Galway Races, from Monday evening to the following Sunday afternoon, is about style and elegance. And the social whirl day and night, the craic, the pubs, the punters, the bookies, the owners and trainers ... and the horses.
There’s been nothing quite like it since this great sporting, social and cultural event first took place 146 years ago: a two-day race meeting in mid-August 1869. The attendance on the first day — more than 40,000 — left the Chairman of the Stewards, Lord St Lawrence, M.P. for Galway, astonished. So many arrived early, flocking to the City of the Tribes on the day before racing opened, that Eyre Square was turned into a campsite.
That wasn’t quite how it was planned by the Honourable Chairman and his fellow stewards, Captain Blake Forster; the Marquis of Clanricarde; Lord Claremorris; Henry S Persse, Pierce Joyce, George Morris and Valentine Blake, but they improvised splendidly and next morning (Tuesday, August 17) all roads led to Ballybrit.