GALWAY has a habit of sprinkling stardust on its feature-race results each year, and few victories would be as popular next week than a Guinness Galway Hurdle triumph for Bill Durkan’s Laafi and young jockey Paddy O’Brien.

It was an agonising episode for connections to be stripped of their win in an Aintree Grand National Festival handicap hurdle win with the same horse when O’Brien was later found to have used his whip four times above the permitted level of seven strikes for jumps races in Britain.