FESTIVALS AND EVENTS:THE BUILDERS might have been tip-toeing around Ballybrit but they were there in numbers. In the comfortable, friendly, relaxed crowd, blessed with sunshine, they would have been hard to miss in their occasional forays among the hoi polloi, writes KATHY SHERIDAN
Tom Parlon was in the vanguard, dispensing tips (bad ones), claiming to like nothing better than a pint in the hoi polloi’s Budweiser tent, and telling jokes (bad ones). “Tom Bailey has a horse running and I asked him ‘will he win’ and he said ‘will he f**k’.”
Sadly, Bailey didn’t actually say that, and the horse didn’t win. The point is the lads still like a joke. Parlon is setting about the refurbishment of – drum roll – his pig unit. Lots of whitewash involved.
There was a touch of surreality about it all. With the Nama legislation about to hit the fan, big developers such as Bernard McNamara, Jerry O’Reilly, Sean Mulryan, Ray Grehan and Tom Bailey, some a tad paler and more low-key, tried to relax upstairs in the well-guarded Plate suite and beyond, praying that nothing would impede the bill’s smooth progress – “We’ll be a basket case if it doesn’t,” said one – while across the sward in the Race Committee building, the one who holds their fate in his hands lunched before presenting the Galway Plate trophy.
The Taoiseach Brian Cowen, who has never missed the Galway Races, is the man who abolished the “tint” and he doesn’t miss it in the slightest. Not only does he not miss it, he admits he viewed it as a bit of an impediment to the real business of the day: “Sure if you were in the tent, you wouldn’t know you were at the racing,” he said, in the words of a true racing man.
Now, he’s looking ahead to another sports event, dog-racing – his brother’s dog, Gilbeyhall Jake, is running in the Tipperary Cup next Saturday in Thurles – and then he’s off to the west of Ireland, where his family has taken a house for a couple of weeks.
Wasn’t his wife inclined to drag him screaming to somewhere foreign? “Sure why would you do that?” he said, looking a bit puzzled.
Bertie Ahern haunted the course like Banquo’s ghost, fuller of figure, amiably talkative, and proving himself no mean tipster to media colleagues, who seemed ready to revise earlier scepticism about that tribunal story of winning the money on the horses.
For other long-term habitués of Ballybrit, yesterday was starting to feel a lot like the old days, a time before bling, chandeliered Fianna Fáil “tints” and €400 dinners.
The lower crowds were the talk of the course. “You wouldn’t have been able to stand out there last year,” said a veteran, gesturing out at the stand. “A lot of the crap has gone out of it, it’s more homely again,” said a developer who grew up in the area.
Some were feeling the pinch; the attendance yesterday was down nearly a fifth on the same day last year, the tote was down about a quarter of a million on last year’s €1.25 million, and the bookies takings were down by a whopping €750,000 to €2.5 million.
Meanwhile, the race organisers were getting it in the neck for failing to recognise the new reality. Some corporate types up in the suites who a year ago wouldn’t have noticed a stray thousand here or there, were criticising the refusal to lower the rates for a table placing: “Punchestown did it for €140, yet it’s €290 here today and €310 or €320 tomorrow, and signs on it – it’s only half-full up.”
The champagne bar still dispenses by the bottle (from €70 to €160) rather than by the glass, and the hot beef rolls come at a swingeing €9 a pop.
Given the times that are in it, it was remarkable that the tented shops boasted two diamond outlets, one – Cara Diamonds – showing serious bling, such as a tennis bracelet for €45,000, another – Diamond lite.ie – touching the zeitgeist with excellent fakes for a fraction of that. They’re what Gillian Walsh – who happens to be married to Ruby and runs the company with her sister, Niki – calls “recession rocks . . . I wouldn’t deny a girl a real diamond but in the interim . . . ”. A monument to common sense, the former animal nutritionist is able to see her husband occasionally now that they have the odd racecourse destination in common.
Recession rocks give way to hot beef rolls and the champagne bar lives on; there is no concession to the new era here. The queue for the ATM in the white van boasted Disney-type queuing lanes that were completely unnecessary. “Plenty of money in there I hope?” said a man to a security guard. “Plenty of that but not too many looking for it,” came the reply.
Even the women seemed more sensibly dressed; 24-year-old Emma Ryan, a teacher in Co Kilkenny, was prettily turned out in a short white polo dress over little white shorts, under a deep pink trench coat worn with flat suede boots.
The wide-boys and their dazzling pinstripes seemed a tad scarcer on the ground this year, too. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though. Ladies’ Day today may reveal that some demons are impossible to slay.
