Galway Plate 2023 Betting Tips
The Galway Plate takes place during the Galway Racing Festival, which begins in the last week of July.
The Galway Plate, alongside the Guinness Galway Hurdle Handicap, is considered one of the two most important and high-profile races of the week and this year will take place on Wednesday August 2nd at 6.40pm.
It’s a National Hunt Chase Grade 3 race and is open to horses who are four years old, or older. It’s open to both male and female horses.
It’s run over a distance of 2 miles and 6 1/2 furlongs and horses will have to overcome 14 fences from start to finish to get home. It’s a handicap race.
This year’s edition will have a prize of €159,300 to the winner, so there’s certainly plenty to play for here.
Galway Plate 2023 List of Runners
- Kilcruit
- Final Orders
- Ashe Tree Meadow
- Final Orders
- Enniskerry
- Hewick
- Fury Road
- Hollow Games
- The Goffer
- Easy Game
- Lifetime Ambition
- Gevrey
- Gabbys Cross
- Visionarian
- Andy Dufresne
- Ciel de Neige
- Foxy Jacks
- A Wave of the Sea
- Authorised Art
- Born by the Sea
- Fighter Allen
- Hereditary Rule
- Hurricane Georgie
- Upping the Anti
- Vina Ardanza
- Lieutenant Command
Two to back for the 2023 Galway Plate
Hewick (around 12.0)
Easy Game (around 15.0)
The ‘winning horses’ analysis shows that two horses have managed to win the race back-to-back since 1988, proving that a win in the previous year is unsurprisingly good preparation for doing it all over again the following time.
And with that in mind, last year’s winner Hewick (around 12.0) could be the third one managing to defend its title over the last 25 years.
A slight negative is that neither trainer Joseph John Hanlon nor jockey Brian Hughes have stand-out records in the race but Hanlon was of course the trainer last year, so if he has the horse in good shape, it has every chance. Yes, it’s carrying more weight this time round but we’ve seen the very best Grade 1 horses carrying extra weight and still winning, and Hewick is more than capable of doing just that.
At an even bigger price, Easy Game backers will know that this race is no easy game, but it’s one who deserves respect.
Two years ago, it was runner-up in this race and may well have won had the jockey not dropped his stick down the stretch. Last year he had a poor run admittedly, but that can be somewhat excused by the fact it was hampered, and didn’t get a clear run.
Easy Game has an excellent record of 13 wins from 25 national hunt races in its career and going back to April 2022, has remarkably won eight out of its last nine races, so is impossible to ignore.
Interesting trends to note
Odds of the past five winners (most recent first): 16/1, 5/1 favourite, 7/1, 9/1, 33/1.
Irish horses are the ones to be on. After all, there have been more Ireland-based horses winning the race (19 of them) than from any other country. The 397 runners have produced 58 horses who have placed, in addition to those 19 winners.
At the opposite end of the scale are horses from GB. 37 GB-based runners have produced just one winner and two horses who have placed. In the last three years, the horse going off as favourite has finished in the following positions (most recent last): 2,1,3.
4 of the last 20 winners went off as favourites.
All but one of the last 20 winners was a male horse (19 out of 421 runners) while only one was female, albeit from a total of just 13 runners entered.
The biggest-priced winner of the past 20 years went off at 33/1: Gordon Elliott’s Clarcam in 2018.
Winning horses
The first winner all the way back in 1869 was Absentee, who was anything but absent from the race, carving its name into the history books after winning in style.
Only one horse has won it on three occasions, Tipperary Boy. But that was a long time ago with its victories coming in 1899, 1901 and 1902.
As we know, the race was a fair bit shorter than it is these days.
Just looking at winners since 1988, only two have won it on more than one occasion: Life of a Lord (1995-1996) and Ansar (2004-2005).
You will have noticed that on the two occasions it happened, they were back-to-back wins. Rather than a horse winning it one year, not winning the next and then coming back to win it the next year or even later.
So, if last year’s winner Hewick is going to win the Galway Plate for a second time, the stats suggest this year will be its best chance of doing so.
Most successful trainers
Only one man has trained four winners in this race and that man is veteran Irish trainer Dermot Weld (74 years old), who is still active. His winners were: Kiichi (1990), General Idea (1993), Ansar (2004, 2005).
Now just looking at the last 20 renewals of the race, the most successful trainer is Gordon Elliott with three wins: Lord Scoundrel (2016), Clarcam (2018) and Borice (2019). Across the 30 horses he’s sent out on this race, he’s also had six who have placed, in addition to those three winners.
Two of Dermot Weld’s four winners won in the past 20 years (Ansar on both occasions) while Henry de Bromhed also had two winners since 2002.
Most successful Jockeys
Since 1988 four jockeys have ridden the winner on two occasions. They are: Ruby Walsh (1999 and 2008), Adrian Maguire (1992 and 1993) and more recently, Mark Walsh (2012 and 2020), and Paul Townend (2011 and 2021).
Townend is one to look out for in this race because in addition to the two winners he’s ridden in the past 15 editions, he’s also been on eight other horses who placed, meaning that 10/15 of his last rides in the Galway Plate have resulted in the horse either being placed, or winning.