The sight of a dozen nimble-footed dancers hop-jigging and reeling below the paddock under the inscrutable gaze of the life-size bronze statue of the former champion jockey AP McCoy could mean only one thing. Suspicions were quickly confirmed by a quick visit to the nearby Guinness Village, where racegoers wearing appropriately coloured scarves distributed by a well known banter-bookie were being entertained by a fiddle-heavy folk band milking traditional Irish hits.
Welcome to St Patrick’s Thursday at the Festival, an occasion branded in blarney when the sometimes tiresome paddywhackery could scarcely seem more forced short of racecourse officials ordering jockeys to replace their whips with knobbly sticks. Scratch beneath the emerald veneer, however, and all is not quite what it seems. It turns out the shivering dance troupe hail from Coventry, the musicians call Manchester home and these days the bookmaker behind the gaudy green neckwear is more readily associated with Malta than Mullingar. Nevertheless, after a subdued day when the Festival attracted its second-lowest attendance for any afternoon’s racing since its expansion to four days in 2005, any atmosphere, however contrived and cliched, was worthy of the traditional 100,000 Irish welcomes.
