Wacky races

The Last Straw: Galway race-week is the nearest thing Ireland has to the fiesta in Pamplona. All that's missing - and maybe the organisers would rectify this next year - is a daily "running of the horses" through the streets.

This would lack the danger of the famous bull run. But if they let the herd loose down Quay Street, around pub closing time, the results could be dramatic enough to amuse tourists. Young, foolhardy men would try to outrun the rampaging horses. And if they were the horses I backed this week, they'd probably succeed.

The atmosphere in the city is not quite as feverish as Pamplona. But people who arrive perfectly sane on Monday afternoon tend to be suffering at least a mild temperature by Wednesday. Soon, they're exhibiting classic symptoms of Galway fever such as a belief that, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, there really is a horse that can't lose in the 4.25.

I saw this at first hand when a friend mentioned the words "dead" and "cert", in that order, about a mare in the one-mile handicap. Shrewdly, I inquired whence this information emanated. And, after learning that it was not from the trainer, or a premium-line tipping service, but from "a fella who works in the Examiner", I knew exactly what to do: back the horse anyway, just in case. From the way she ran, I concluded that the mare had been drinking in Quay Street the night before, possibly with the fella from the Examiner.

For one gender in particular, Galway fever peaks on the Thursday, when all women of voting age - except those who can produce a medical certificate to excuse them - are compelled to dress up. It really must be one of those ancient by-laws, like the one that warned the wild Irish not to "strutte or swagger through the streetes of Galway". But the observance level is staggering. Everywhere you look, women are dressed up to the nines. At least the nines. A few miscalculate and dress up to the tens, or even the elevens, which can be embarrassing.

So great is the sartorial fever that it spills into the nightly meetings at the city's greyhound track. The track provides a vital back-up service for punters who, through some oversight, haven't already managed to lose all their money on the horses.

And for women suffering withdrawal after Thursday, Friday at the dog track also has a best-dressed lady competition. As at the races, there's a prize for men too, but the male competition is not remotely as intense. To be honest, the greyhounds have more fashionable jackets than most of the guys watching them.

For breathless excitement during race week, few people rival the woman who does the traffic bulletins on Galway Bay FM. She spends a lot of time in a helicopter, from where she can confirm that, yes, traffic is terrible on all approaches to Ballybrit. Chances are you already knew this: you're stuck in a two-mile tailback after all. But she communicates her updates with such enthusiasm, it helps pass the time.

That's assuming you're not in a helicopter too. Hundreds of people are. The way Galway is going, the radio woman will soon be doing flight traffic updates during race week: ". . . and avoid the Ballybane roundabout if you can - it's tail-propeller-to-tail-propeller up there at the moment."

Galway is a very Irish city these days. Not like the era when its western gate, looking with dread towards Connemara, had the inscription, "From the ferocious O'Flahertys may God protect us". The O'Flahertys have long had the run of the place, and they strutte and swagger quite openly now. But thanks to its maritime tradition, Galway has always had a cosmopolitan feel too.

You can see this in the multilingual menu of McDonagh's fish-and-chip shop, which features all the main European languages as well as Chinese and Japanese. I was fascinated to learn that, while the French for "mushy peas" is "petits pois à l'Anglaise", the Portuguese translation is "ervilhas mushy". Perhaps the Brazilian jockey Valdir Rodrigo de Souza, who rode the winner of the race the "dead cert" was supposed to win, enjoyed some ervilhas mushy beforehand. I see from our race report that he won despite having "put up 3lb overweight".

Maybe some of Christopher Columbus's crew stopped for mushy peas when they visited Galway once. A monument at the quayside bears the words, "Off these shores in around 1477, the Genoese sailor Cristofore Colombo found sure signs of land beyond the Atlantic".

We don't know how sure his information was, but it sounds to me like Columbus had succumbed to the Galway fever. He backed India to be on the other side of the ocean and, as we all know, it's still running.