By Kevin Murphy
The seven day Galway Races begin on Monday with massive prize money available for both the Galway Plate and Galway Hurdle.
Dermot Weld has been dubbed the ‘King of Ballybrit’ and his horses will be well supported by punters throughout the week.
Weld has been crowned Champion Trainer on 28 occasions and the ‘King of Ballybrit’ will be the focus of much attention at Galway.
The Kildare based handler always likes to play down his chances every year and has insisted that he will have a smaller than usual amount of runners.
“Ideally we don’t want much rain because good ground will be perfect for Galway. The numbers we send will depend on the ground obviously but I do expect them to be down this
“The first reason for that is I’ve very few jumpers these days, only four or five, and they’re really dual-purpose horses.
“The second reason is we’ve had a very successful spring and summer so far, winning lots of races, and the result is we’ve used up a lot of ammunition.”
The Galway Plate is a great spectacle while the ‘Hurdle’ is extremely tough to win. The latter is full of intrigue and the Tony Martin trained Quick Jack is currently the bookmaker’s favourite.
He was a comfortable winner at the meeting last summer and is obviously laid out for this huge prize all season.
Martin has had a relatively quiet season by his high standards but he has really targeted Galway in recent seasons.