Searching for your hotel key card at 3am: the only way to end a Galway Races day

There are two ways of seeing trains. Watching them from a distance moving slowly along. Or you can stick your head out of the window of one. Same thing, very different perspective.

The Galway Races (always with a capital R) is exactly the same. Watching from afar, on TV or even just going to Ballybrit itself doesn’t capture the full experience. You really need to be knee deep in the betting ring, wedged into a stand, queueing for a toilet, ordering drinks over someone’s shoulder and searching for your hotel key card at 3am having lost your suit jacket to say you’ve really been to the Galway Races.

Galway is that curious blend of craic and magic. It is on all the national papers, front pages as well as back. It’s on RTE. It gets mentioned on the radio news every hour alongside the Premier League transfer news. It’s not Cheltenham or Punchestown, it’s a long way from Ascot or York, but that’s exactly the point. That’s what makes it Galway: that it is indefinitely, unashamedly Galway and nothing else.