The death of renowned trainer Edward O’Grady made for an unusually sombre start to the 2025 Galway festival on Monday evening where Filey Bay delivered an evocative success in the featured Connacht Hotel Handicap.
The JP McManus-owned 7-1 shot justified significant market support to win the biggest prize of the year for amateur riders under jockey Alan O’Sullivan.
It was a poignant success for O’Sullivan whose older brother Michael tragically died in February from injuries sustained in a fall at Thurles in an incident that devastated racing and beyond.
After cooly guiding Filey Bay to an ultimately smooth defeat of Mon Coeur, with Ragmans Corner in third, O’Sullivan looked to the skies before paying tribute to O’Grady who passed away on Sunday.
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Like all riders on Monday, O’Sullivan (21) wore a black armband in memory of the 75-year-old former champion trainer who had been a mainstay of Irish racing for more than half a century.
Coming just months after the loss of his Cheltenham Festival winning older brother, it was a heartfelt message that chimed with popular delight for the big race winning rider and his family.
“My goal at the start of the year was to be good enough that someone might want me for this [race]. He was looking down on me, I think,” said O’Sullivan. “I probably went the brave man’s route, but I thought it’s what Mikey would have done. I got a dream run and he galloped all the way to the line.”
Filey Bay was a second winner on the day for McManus which felt apt in the circumstances.
Back in the 1970s it was O’Grady that nurtured McManus’s racing interest beyond gambling and bookmaking into becoming the most significant owner in jump racing history.
He saddled McManus’s first Cheltenham Festival winner, Mister Donovan in 1982, and continued to train for him until his death on Sunday aged 75.
The renowned businessman was in Ballybrit and fondly remembered his old ally as “something special”.
He said: “When Edward fancied a horse, and gave you the office, you didn’t need to have money; all you needed to have was credit, because you always felt he would deliver.”
Filey Bay’s trainer Emmet Mullins is rapidly carving out a similar reputation and won the big race for a second time in three years. He saddled three in it and although another of his hopes, Toll Stone, was weak in the betting, market trends pointed to confidence in the winner.
“It was meant to be and I’m a bit lost for words,” he said. “It was Michael’s saddle that Alan was using today. Michael rode a few times for me here and I think we hit the crossbar twice, so Alan steadied the ship.”
O’Grady trained the Day One feature winner, Kentucky Charm, 20 years ago, part of a festival CV that also included three Plate victories in four years between 1978-1981 and a Galway Hurdle in 1979.
McManus’s opening winner was the regally bred odds-on shot Davy Crockett whose trainer Willie Mullins pointed to how his former colleague’s Cheltenham Festival tally of 18 winners set the bar for him and others in more recent years.
“He was the foremost trainer going to Cheltenham, when no one [from Ireland] was having runners or winners in Cheltenham. He was having one or two of them every year,” said Mullins who nominated the Royal Bond at the Fairyhouse Winter Festival as a target for the winner.
There was an even shorter priced winner of the two-year-old maiden when Constitution River landed 1-5 odds with ease under Wayne Lordan.
However, there was some reprieve for bookmakers when Jerrari scored in the handicap hurdle.
British based trainer David Loughnane returned to his native Galway to saddle a first festival winner with It’sneverjustone, successful in the seven-furlong handicap.
“It’ll take a while for this one to sink in. It’s magical. I grew up on the hurdy gurdy’s across the road looking in on this place and the noise of the horses galloping past. I don’t come from racing. This was my Everest for a long time now. It’s very special,” Loughnane said.
Monday’s opening festival attendance of 18,472 was up almost eight per cent from last year’s tally of 17,074.
