IF you’re looking for a statistic that encapsulates so much of what is good about the Galway Festival, a total of 30 different trainers saddling winners at this year’s meeting is something worth shouting about.

The power of Willie Mullins still came to the fore, training the joint-top tally of five winners alongside Joseph O’Brien, and Gordon Elliott still captured two major handicaps in his overall haul of four winners. Aidan O’Brien won four maidens, matching the same taking for the week as Jessica Harrington, but it still didn’t feel like a festival of outright domination from the sport’s powerhouses.

A spectacular four-timer from six runners at the meeting catapulted Ross O’Sullivan further into the spotlight, while Mark Fahey and Andrew Kinirons also deserve credit for saddling two winners apiece alongside Galway Plate hero Noel Meade.

Other trainers to get on the scoresheet included Philip Dempsey, Joe Murphy, Jack Davison, Denis Hogan, Emmet Mullins, Gavin Cromwell, Iggy Madden, Danny Howard, Tom Gibney, Richard O’Brien, Bill Durkan, Tom Mullins, Mick Mulvany, Kevin Smith, Natalia Lupini, Micky Fenton, Adrian Murray, Charles Byrnes, Tony Mullins and the British-based duo of Adrian Keatley and Richard Fahey. The pool is broad.

Perhaps there was more openness to the week with Willie Mullins’ troops not quite collecting with the same regularity as in recent years, for all that nobody trained more winners than him during the week.

At each festival since 2017, the champion trainer has averaged just over 10 winners at Ballybrit. He had been quieter than usual heading into the 2024 meeting, however, with just three National Hunt winners in Ireland from 42 runners during the month of July (7% strike rate). With the exception of some Covid-impacted months in 2020, that is his lowest tally of winners for any month of racing over jumps in Ireland since June 2015 (three winners from just 14 runners).

It goes to show what a force to be reckoned with he is when still able to pull off 50/1 shock in the Connacht Hotel Handicap with Sirius while his runners hadn’t been hitting the bullseye as often as we’re used to with his own extraordinarily high standards.

Handicap dilemma

For many trainers, getting their runners into the ultra-competitive handicap races at the Galway Festival can feel like a relief in itself. Such is the demand for owners to be at Galway with a runner, many of these races end up being extremely condensed in a handicapping sense.

Take Tuesday’s Caulfield Industrial Handicap over an extended mile as an example. In a race designed for horses rated between 50 and 70 on the flat, horses with a mark of 66 were not even high enough to get in. Some rated 67 didn’t have a spot after declarations.

In comparison, the day after Galway ended, a handicap with a slightly higher but largely similar rating band at Naas saw no horse balloted out - and a 52-rated runner even got in as a reserve. Chalk and cheese.

It was a similar story with some of the National Hunt handicaps. A 103-rated hurdler held too low a mark to get a run in Monday’s Easyfix Handicap Hurdle at Galway for horses rated between 95 and 109, while in a race with the same rating cap at Cork the day after Galway, a mark of 96 was sufficiently high to get in.

When the demand is so high, it seems only right that the financial reward for winning these races should be reflective of that level of competitiveness, but could the pots at Galway be more lucrative given the meeting’s major profile?

Feature prizes

Credit where it’s due, there are some fabulous prizes on offer for the major races at Ballybrit, including a feature worth at least six figures each day and a fund of €270,000 for both the Tote Galway Plate and Guinness Galway Hurdle.

That said, Thursday’s Rockshore Refreshingly Irish Handicap is worth looking at as an example of where what is on offer could be stronger.

Grey Leader made all under an excellent Gary Carroll ride to score off a mark of 85 in that extended mile affair. For context, that rating would have been good enough to get a run in any handicap at last year’s Irish Champions Festival, and he was subsequently raised 8lb to a rating of 93 - certainly putting him well ahead of the average flat horse in the population.

This Ballybrit contest was also another fiercely condensed race in terms of the ratings involved, with just 6lb separating top and bottom of the handicap.

What was the reward for a horse of this level winning at Ireland’s biggest summer festival in a highly competitive race televised on RTÉ? €10,500.

All things considered, it feels like a bit of a disappointing return, especially when you factor in just how much of that is split between the winning connections.

Lower end

Of the 53 races at the 2024 Galway Festival, almost half - 25 - had a prize of €10,200 for the winner. More than two thirds - 34 - offered €12,000 or less to the winner. Granted, it must be said that Ballybrit does offer festival opportunities for lower-grade horses than are accommodated at many other major meetings. That is clearly welcome.

However, trainer Richard O’Brien summed up frustration over the situation when speaking to the Racing Post ahead of this year’s meeting.

“I do think the prize-money at Galway is disappointing,” he said.

“The prize-money for the feature races is terrific but not so much for the supporting races. It’s not enough to stick a rosette on someone, it should be reflected in prize-money.

“Last Ammo won the race preceding the Plate and the prize money for the winner was €10,200, which works out about €8,000 for the owners.

“People talk about the scandal that horses are running at Ripon for four grand, but you’re only taking on four or five horses. The prize-money being so much better here is a massive myth and I don’t agree it should be channelled towards the better horses. The whole thing should be lifted.”

Trainers’ share

As Ado McGuinness also told Amy Lynam in The Big Interview from these pages before Galway on the topic of Irish prize money: “It’s a huge factor in the whole game. I know HRI has planned for another 40 meetings but I don’t think we need more racing, I think we need more prize money… If you win €100,000 in prize money in Ireland, a trainer will end up getting less than 8% of that, and after he pays his taxes out of that and everything else, he’s not left with a whole pile of money… You have to be able to do something else to try to make it pay, and selling is what you have to do.”

If the breakdown of prize money is impacting trainers on these shores, what about the likes of Richard Fahey and Adrian Keatley who successfully pulled off winners from overseas on the undercard races this year? There are added costs and red tape in a post-Brexit world for these horses, who earned €21,000 (for a listed success) and €10,200 respectively. There is so much to celebrate about the Galway Festival, but prize money away from the feature events is something that probably merits strengthening given the prominent profile of the meeting.