SERIOUSLY ALL FOR THE CARIC

Xander Brett gets taste of Listowel's fierce passion for fun – and winners

- By Xander Brett

I had no lead-up at Listowel. Stepping off the bus, which had slowly filled with racegoers as it trundled south, I was plunged immediately into a carnival that appeared to celebrate the very essence of Irishness without ever doing so deliberately.

Listowel is a small town in the northern vales of Co Kerry. It's no racing powerhouse and its small course holds but two annual meetings, a three-day Whit Weekend fixture and a seven-day Harvest Festival. When it's on, however, I got the impression that racing seeps into every facet of local life.

On the Harvest Festival's penultimate day, with cavalcades of coaches continuing to roll in, music was being piped over megaphones stuck to lampposts. Shop windows were displaying racing books, photos and miscellaneous memorabilia.

As swarming masses moved past the ruins of a castle and crossed a bridge over the gushing River Feale (water surrounds the track on three sides), they entered the embrace of rolling green hills. This might be a harvest festival, but local agriculture looked decidedly pastoral.

After negotiating the turnstiles, and having obtained sustenance from a glass-fronted food hall (what the Irish call 'bacon' and others gammon), the handshake of Pat 'Cash' Healy, a member of the Listowel Races committee, but recognisable across Ireland in his capacity as a photographer, was so firm in its welcome that I was lucky to emerge with any bones left intact.