When the jet-black greyhound fell behind at the bend, the recently laid-off plasterer found it too painful to watch. He looked up again just as Nest Egg crossed the line a winner.

"For the longest time I've enjoyed a night at the races. I've had cash for a social life, for the odd splash-out, for foolish bets," said McKeever, one of more than 20,000 workers laid off this year from Ireland's suddenly dormant building sites. "The dumbest bet I've ever made was on this Celtic Tiger. Now I can't afford to lose."

Tens of thousands of Irish face a financial white-knuckle ride because Europe's longest-running winning streak -- the vaunted Celtic Tiger economy -- has come to an inglorious end. Last month, Ireland became the first country in the 15-nation euro zone to fall into recession, and economists predict that a familiar era of closing factories and net emigration could return.

The speed of the reversal has stunned Ireland top to bottom. And denial is giving way to desperation.

"We've had this corpse on the kitchen table for a while, and it's just today we've decided that it's actually dead," said Eddie Hobbs, Ireland's ubiquitous investment guru.

Hobbs became a national icon three years ago when he fronted a blunt-spoken TV series called "Rip-off Republic" highlighting the outrageous expense of boomtime Ireland and foreshadowing the crash to come.

From 1994 to 2007, Ireland was one of Europe's brightest stars. Its gross domestic product expanded at nearly triple the European average. Unemployment fell from 15 percent to below 4 percent, and a centuries-old tradition of emigration was turned upside down.

About 1,000 foreign companies, more than half of them American, arrived or expanded in this English-speaking outpost on the EU's western edge. The companies largely sought to exploit a 12.5 percent rate of business tax, the lowest within the euro zone, and took heart from the arrival of peace in neighboring Northern Ireland.

Within a few whirlwind years, Ireland shed its status as one of the EU's poorest members and became a magnet for many of Europe's best and brightest graduates in software design, information technology and drug research.

As in the United States, good times fueled a runaway property market, the fastest-growing in Europe.

Then the U.S. subprime crisis sent shockwaves across the Atlantic, hitting particularly hard the most America-dependent economy in Europe. International investors cast a cold eye on the exceptional exposure of Ireland's banks to property developers, bad loans and grossly inflated land prices.

The bank-heavy Irish Stock Exchange has shed nearly three-fourths of its value since April 2007. As Dublin bankers' ability to borrow internationally dried up, the government responded with a world-first guarantee for all deposits and borrowings of Irish-owned banks -- a liability so big it represents euro95,000 (US$130,000) per man, woman and child.

The guarantee seemed to work, with a reported euro10 billion (US$14 billion) in new deposits flowing into Dublin this month. But the decision to take on bank liabilities exceeding euro400 billion (US$550 billion) has maimed the nation's credit rating. This is particularly bad timing for Ireland because, after more than a decade of double-digit hikes in spending and fat budget surpluses, the national finances are glowing neon red.