Weld takes trainers' title as records get blown away

The first seven-day Galway festival wound up yesterday after a week that predictably blew all records out of the water.

A colossal £14,076,968 was bet at the festival. Yesterday alone £1,343,714 was bet with the bookmakers, bringing the total for the week to £10,248,313, while the Tote total of £3,828,655 was helped by an aggregate of £416,835 yesterday.

A record crowd of over 32,000 on Thursday was the highest in a week where approximately 145,000 people paid to get into the enclosures.

Just how special Galway is can also be gauged by the money bet on individual races, with £368,054 bet on the last race on Friday and £249,272 bet on the last yesterday.

On the jockey front, Michael Kinane and Pat Smullen rode six winners, but Kinane won the leading flat rider award on greater prize money. Richard Dunwoody won the jump award on the same basis after tying with Norman Williamson on three.

The leading trainer was yet again Dermot Weld, who brought his total for the week to eight when Social Harmony overcame ground fears to win yesterday's Eircell Handicap very easily.

Owned by local fisherman Sean Creaven, Social Harmony started a strong favourite but ran up the hill even more strongly to beat Father Murphy by two lengths and set up a possible tilt at the Ayr Gold Cup.

"I finished second in that race years ago with Sarasota Star and he's been my only runner in it," said Weld who had this race in mind since Social Harmony was balloted out of the Wokingham. "This old lad could go because I think it's always better for handicappers to go for the big races."

Conor O'Dwyer hadn't ridden a winner for almost two months, but he made up for that in style on the 20 to 1 shot Blow Wind Blow in the second division of the Networker Hurdle.

The first division went to the better fancied Akasian on which Norman Williamson secured a run on the turn in to beat Inchiquin Castle by a couple of lengths.

Harlenog was just a reserve for the six furlong handicap but blazed the trail to give some lucky Tote punters an approximately 146 to 1 winner.

It's not often that Cheltenham gets a mention in the middle of the Galway summer, but Aidan O'Brien did just that on Saturday after Kilcash Castle made an impressive winning debut.

"He'll have two more races and go for the Cheltenham bumper. He looks the real deal even though he has never been on a racecourse before. He is still very raw," said O'Brien.

The last flight made all the difference in the Dawn Milk Handicap Hurdle as Joe Bosky looked all over the winner until a mistake allowed Twin Gale the chance to get back up. Joe Bosky was afterwards found to be lame.

"At last!" was John Murtagh's reaction as he won his only race of the festival on the topweight Anzari in the Premier Nursery. It might not be his last success on Anzari, however, who looks a decent prospect considering he carried 9.7 to a comfortable success.

Adrian Maguire is set to clinch a deal to ride for Ferdy Murphy, it was revealed yesterday. But the jump jockey, in his first full season since splitting with David Nicholson, will retain his freelance status for the 1999/2000 campaign.

Maguire won the Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup on Sibton Abbey for Murphy in 1992, and he made regular trips up north to ride for the Middleham-based trainer last season.

"At the moment it has not been finalised, but we just need to cross the t's and dot the i's," Murphy said. "But he will still ride as a freelance and if he has a good horse to ride down south he will be able to.

"You need continuity and Adrian and I go back a long way. Number one with him is looking after the horses and that is important as our horses are all big, National Hunt types."