The Punchestown Festival usually signals the end of the winter jumps season but yesterday it also heralded the arrival of summer.
Racing enthusiasts basked in the sunshine and applied liberal amounts of sun cream. There was a run on ice cream and a red-faced child was spotted trying to wriggle free of his vest at the parade ring.
One swallow may not make a summer, but does one helicopter signal the official end to recession? It was like the olden days as eyes turned towards the heavens on hearing the familiar sound of wealthy people being ferried to the racecourse.
This was the opening day of the festival and it attracted its biggest first-day crowd with 19,459 people going through the turnstiles. Some 102,000 are expected to have attended by Saturday.
RTÉ at play
Ticket presales are up by 51 per cent compared with last year and 15,000 corporate hospitality clients have been booked. The fine weather might also encourage people to take a half-day off work as racing gets under way at 3.40pm.
Work was the last thing on the mind of the RTÉ staff who decamped en masse to the Co Kildare track. News anchors Aengus MacGrianna and Eileen Whelan arrived together, causing a flurry of worry among news addicts over who would be revealing the Iseq index prices later.
Aengus was met with a barrage of questions from female reporters about his wedding to alpaca farmer Terry Gill on June 22nd. "I certainly didn't realise there was so much involved in organising it," he said, suddenly looking panic-struck at the thought of floral arrangements. They are having a humanist ceremony in Ballymagarvey village, near their home in Ashbourne. Then they will get married in a UK registry office. "I would love to be able to get married properly here but that's just not the case," he added. Will there be anyone left in the RTÉ newsroom on June 22nd? "There had better be," he replied. "I can't feed them all."
His boss, RTÉ head of news and current affairs Kevin Bakhurst, was enjoying his first experience of an Irish race meeting. The former BBC News controller said he was settling into his job well, despite the financial challenges. "It's more enjoyable than I expected," he added. "Is it tough? Yeah, but you'd expect it. That's why it's interesting."
Meanwhile, local couple Niall and Gillian Quinn said they were looking forward to selling their impressive pad in Naas and moving into something smaller now that they no longer needed stables.
There have been several serious inquiries. “There has been plenty of interest, not all of it genuine,” said a rueful Gillian. “But the estate agent has been fantastic in making sure that the only people who get to see it are genuine buyers.”
She’s doing a degree in psychology so if any rubberneckers make their way past the estate agent, she’ll be well equipped to weed them out.
O'Rourke in clover
Meanwhile, radio presenter Seán O'Rourke said his takeover of the Pat Kenny slot was going "really well".
“At the start there was a certain amount of tension attached to it . . . but now it’s just a job that I really enjoy.”
The JNLR radio listenership figures are out tomorrow and he is hoping for the best. “I’d like to think we’ll come close to holding our own,” he said.
And just then the Baldonnel Singers on the nearby stage launched into Hallelujah , which surely must be a good omen.
Today’s racegoers will be looking for every good omen they can find as it’s Gold Cup day. Judging by the weather forecast, you should learn from the red-faced toddler and leave the vest at home.
