Action from the 2024 DRF

Dublin Racing Festival

By Mike Vince

Horse Racing

Sun January 26, 2025 · 2M ago

Mike Vince traces the rise of the Dublin Racing Festival as Leopardstown prepares for the two-day bonanza next weekend.

It was 2018 that Pat Keogh, then Chief Executive of Leopardstown Racecourse, had a dilemma.

The Foxrock track in South Dublin had a hugely successful four days of racing around Christmas, but the rest of its jump season saw three one-day meetings, two of which featured Grade 1 races, namely the Irish Champion Hurdle and Irish Gold Cup.

Why not, he mused, take the three days and make two days of the best of them, and package it as a Festival weekend, which would benefit the local economy also - and not just in the Euros paid out as punters formed an orderly queue.

The Dublin Racing Festival has been such a success (and not just if your name is Mullins) that after 20,000 people packed into what is now the capital's only racecourse on the Saturday 12 months ago, the venue took the unprecedented (in Ireland) decision to make the weekend an all-ticket affair.

The 2024 Festival will be remembered as the year Willie Mullins did what even Willie Mullins had never done before - landing all eight Grade 1 races over the two days, though not quite in the manner that had been half-expected after Danny Mullins had got Dancing City, Kargese and It Etait Temps to beat their better-fancied stablemates in the opening three races.

And then came Sunday as Fact To File finished alone and the Irish Champion run without the last flight because of the low sun, meaning it was flat from beyond the car park, won by State Man.

Keogh may well be at Leopardstown this weekend, like the throngs from home and abroad looking for clues for Cheltenham in March, and if he is he can bask in the glory of a job well done in laying the groundwork for what has become a 'must-go' event.

And nobody knows how to party quite like the Irish.

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