Galway Hurdle Handicap 2023 Betting Tips
The Galway Hurdle is a National Hunt race open to horses aged four years or older and run over a distance of 2 miles and 11 yards. Horses entered in it can be either male or female. There are nine hurdles to be jumped. It’s considered one of the two most important races of the week-long Galway Racing Festival and this year will be run on Thursday August 3rd at 5.05pm.
It’s not nearly as old as some of the other of the most famous Irish races, with the first-ever edition only taking place in 1913, when it was won by Red Damsel.
The race was slightly shorter back then, just 1 and a half miles. For the past few years, it has been sponsored by something that will be consumed plenty of during the Galway Racing Festival: Guinness!
Galway Hurdle Handicap 2023 Racecard
- Zarak The Brave
- Filey Bay
- Merlin Giant
- Brazil
- My Mate Mozzie
- Party Central
- Tudor City
- Jesse Evans
- Bialystok
- Glan
- Fils D'oudairies
- Mighty Tom
- Path D'oroux
- Allen
- Captain Conby
- Amir Kabir
- Magic Tricks
- Da Capo Glory
- Lucky Max
- Cash Back
- Prairie Dancer
- Gatsby Grey
- A Wave of The Sea
One to back
Zarak the Brave – Around 5.0
Jockey: Paul Townend Trainer: Willey Mullins
The first positive here with Zarak the Brave is the fact he’s trained by Willey Mullins, who as we know from the research above, has five wins in this race already.
Four races over the hurdles have never seen it finish outside the places with a win, two runner-up spots and a third. So consistency has been the name of the game for this French horse who obviously has plenty of speed as its career on the flat before switching to hurdles was equally impressive, again never finishing outside the places and winning once in four attempts.
In April, it gave us a true glimpse of its ability when runner-up in a classy Grade 1 race for juveniles at Punchestown and followed that up with yet another impressive effort when third in another competitive race over at Auteuil. As we know from the stats above, having placed in the race before this one is another big positive and so that’s another box ticked for it.
So, a high-class horse who perhaps should be carrying more weight than it should here and though it does go off as favourite, it deserves to, and odds of around 5.0 are certainly worth taking.
Winning horses
Pinch Hitter won this race back-to-back, coming home first in both 1982 and 1983.
But only one more horse has managed to win this race on more than one occasion. That horse was Tudor City, trained by Tony Martin, and ridden by Robbie Power the first time and Liam McKenna the second time. What was particularly eye-catching about Tudor City’s wins was that they were not back-to-back. Far from it.
It first won in 2019 at odds of 10/1 and then came back to win it three years later when it was already a veteran at 10 years old. Proof of the fact Tudor City was considered slightly over-the-hill going into the race is that it went off at 22/1.
And this is a horse who at 11 years old is far from done when it comes to visiting the winner’s enclosure. It may have had somewhat indifferent results since that win in last year’s edition of the Galway Hurdle, not placing in its next seven, but it fought back in style to win on June 30 of this year at the Curragh, under James Ryan, winning at 17/2.
Most successful trainers
Those two wins for Tony Martin thanks to Tudor City have contributed to four of his wins, the others coming with Thomas Edison (2014) and Quick Jack (2015).
But going one better with five wins is the great Willie Mullins. The first of those was Mystical City in 1996 and Saldier in 2021.
All in all, it means that in the last nine editions of the race, one or other of those two has trained the winner, the exception being Joseph O’Brien in 2017, who had Tigris River.
Most successful Jockeys
It’s pretty handy if your surname is Mullins when it comes to this race! Patrick Mullins (also known as Mr P W Mullins) is of course the son of the aforementioned Willy Mullins and is the only jockey to have saddled the winner on three occasions in the past 20 years.
His wins came with Sharjah (2018), Aramon (2020) and Saldier (2021). Over those last 20 years only one jockey beyond Mullins has managed to win it more than once: Robbie Power. He had winners in 2013 and 2019, the latter of those on…Tudor City.
Interesting trends to note
- Irish horses have unsurprisingly fared the best in this race. 365 runners from Ireland produced 19 winners and an additional 55 placings.
- GB horses haven’t fared well at all with the last 36 runners producing just one winner and 5 who placed.
- The last 10 editions have seen winning horses of French and German nationality take the race, although both were admittedly trained by the Ireland-based Wilie Mullins.
- Perhaps unsurprisingly, performances leading into the race are a vital indication of how the horse might perform in this one. In the last 20 editions, 73% of the winners had placed in their last two starts. On the other hand, out of 137 horses participating in the race who hadn’t placed in the last 90 days, none of them went on to win it.
- 19 out of the last 20 winners have been male.
- Here’s the Starting Price of the last five winners. Most recent first: 22/1, 18/1, 7/1, 10/1. 12/1. But in the five editions before that, two favourites won, at 7/2 and 9/2 respectively.