In 1869 Captain Wilson Lynch made land available at Ballybrit, Galway, to race horses. A mile and a half of terrain was laid out and the first day of racing was set for August 16. The feature race would be the Galway Plate “of 100 sovs”, an open handicap steeplechase of two and a half miles, with eight jumps, two of them stone walls.

What ensued was nothing short of remarkable. Some 40,000 people arrived at Ballybrit to witness the inappropriately named Absentee win the first Galway Plate. The public park at Eyre Square had to be turned into a campsite to accommodate the visitors. The Midland and Great Western Railway was overwhelmed and the Lough Corrib Steam Navigation Company had to run a special service from Cong. For some reason, this race meeting had captured the public’s imagination. They didn’t know why. They still don’t.

“I’m not really sure what it is,” says John Moloney, manager of the racecourse. “There’s something special about the place all right. I guess it has been going now for so long. People just put it into their diaries. The Plate has been run every year except one since 1869.”

They said the first day’s attendance would never be beaten, and it wasn’t, not in more than 130 years, not until 45,000 people wended their way through the turnstiles on Hurdle day last year.

The first time Tony Sweeney — writer, RTE stalwart and all-round racing encyclopaedia — went to Galway was in 1945. He stayed with the Ussher family that year, a family more synonymous with Galway in those days than the Tribes themselves. John Ussher owned Ishmael, winner of the Ballybrit Plate on that inaugural day in 1869. Harry Ussher trained the winners of all but one race on the opening day in 1920. Harry won his ninth and final Galway Plate in 1945 with 10-1 shot Grecian Victory. The 14-year-old Tony Sweeney who went home was a substantially richer one than the 14-year-old Tony Sweeney who had arrived.

“Galway is on at a great time of year,” says Sweeney, trying to unravel the secret to its success. “Everybody is off work. The schools are off, the universities, the builders, everything is closed, so people are free to go racing. And it has grown gradually, which has been a good thing.”

Step by step. Unlike other festivals, each extra day has been spread around a feature race, he tells you. First the Plate, then the Hurdle, then the McDonogh Handicap and the GPT. And a different crowd comes in for the weekend.

“Of course there is also the strength in the ring,” he says. “Like no other. There is an illusion out there that all of this talk about big bets is nonsense. I can assure you that it is not. The trick is, if you want to have a big bet, make sure that you send in a big bettor.”

Bookmaker John Hughes used to sit at home in Belfast as a youngster during Galway week and watch Tony Sweeney and Micheál O’Hehir on television. Even then from afar, he detected a special atmosphere. The stone walls and the castle ruins, the 25-runner races and the frenzied betting. And he thought: “One day I’ll go there, one day I’ll make a book there.”

When Hughes was 18 he applied for his bookmaker’s licence, Galway on his radar. He met his solicitor to fill out the application. All appeared to be in order. You’re not a publican, are you? No. You’re not a pawnbroker? No. And you’re over 21, aren’t you? Stumped.

Three years later, he gained his licence and made the journey south. “It was the first meeting at which I stood in the south,” he recalls. “I remember getting up in Salthill at six o’clock on the Monday morning — I just couldn’t sleep with excitement — and walking into Eyre Square to get a paper. When I arrived at the track that afternoon to go into the ring, they sent me to the outer enclosure, out with the swings and roundabouts. I was out there for five years before I could get inside. I didn’t care. I was delighted just to be there. And the betting even out there was fantastic.”

Hughes now occupies the No 1 pitch in the ring, the one on the corner as you enter from the back of the stands. He has been travelling down to Galway every year for the past 34 years. Says he wouldn’t miss it, the best meeting in the world. Aidan O’Brien could win one race and the postman could win the next. That’s what makes Galway so special. You just don’t know. And then there is the betting.

“You could hold as much money on the maiden hurdle as you would on the Galway Plate,” he exclaims. “There are lads there who’ll tell you that the two-year-old maiden is their busiest race of the week. To put it into context, I did 3,400 tickets on Galway Hurdle day last year. I would do about 2,400 tickets on Gold Cup day at Cheltenham, and I have the No 1 one pitch there as well.”