A shocking forecast for Family Day saw overall crowds at this year’s Galway Races down by 6,000 – but organisers are delighted that changes made over the last five years have won over racegoers.

Racecourse manager Michael Maloney said until Sunday’s deluge, attendance was on trend to be up on last year, but the yellow rain warnings saw 9,178 chancing the trip to Ballybrit on Mat Hatter’s Day, a drop of 5,000 on 2023 for the final day.

“For the people who came, it actually turned out not too bad as it stopped after the second race, but we were delighted with the attendance and the weather over the six days given the summer we’ve had so far,” exclaimed Mr Maloney.

“But Galway continues to be massive in terms of the money spent by the industry and the knock-on impact. I’m very, very happy with where we are. The Tote turnover was €500000 over two days – that’s huge. it’s hard to see where we would make any further big improvements.”

The overall attendance for the seven days was 116,374. Ladies Day on Thursday provided the biggest crowd over the week with 25,290 racegoers – down just over 600 compared to the same day last year – while there were 22,106 at the Friday evening fixture, also down following very wet fixtures over the last three years.

“I think Friday has been impacted by horrendous weather of last year when it took people too long to get out of Ballybrit so we turned our attention how to improve that. This year we had everybody on transport by 11.15pm – last year the last person wasn’t out until 1.30am so some of the improvements have worked, we hope that gives people back their appetite for the Friday.”

The turnover for the opening five days this week was €5.4m, up €250,000 on last year, one of the strongest in the country – no doubt helped by the avalanche of outsiders who romped home during the festival.

Caption: Davinia Knight from Portarlington, Co Laois, Best Dressed Lady on Ladies Day at the Galway Races. Photo: Andrew Downes, xposure

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