Galway Bay fm newsroom - There was a significant drop in attendance and tote betting at the first weekend meet of the Galway Racing Festival at Ballybrit yesterday.
Over 12,100 people passed through the turnstiles yesterday, a decrease of over a thousand on the figure for 2018.
Tote betting at the racecourse yesterday was 467 thousand euro - a considerable drop of almost 100 thousand on the figure of 547 thousand taken last year.
While it's generally been a good year for the bookmakers, with figures up considerably across the week, no figures are yet available for yesterday.
The big winner of the day - the Galway Shopping Centre Handicap Hurdle - was 'Great Trango' trained by David Harry Kelly and ridden by Philip Enright.
Today is the final day of this years Racing Festival - the iconic Mad Hatters Day - with the first race set to go to post at 2.15 this afternoon.
