Willie Mullins at Punchestown on Saturday© Photo Healy Racing
The Punchestown Festival is a brilliant way to end the National Hunt season each year. A five-day long party that manages to achieve the right blend between the business, the sport and the fun of a day at the races.
I’ve always felt that the industry professionals enjoy the season finale just as much as the public. It’s a time to let the hair down and celebrate a job well done after a long season, but in recent years most of the celebrations are confined to the same select band of perennial winners.
The end of season awards presented on Saturday at Punchestown were almost identical to last year, and the year before and the year before that, as the Mullins stable again won 4 of the 6 season’s prizes with Champion Trainer, Champion Jockey, Champion Amateur Rider and Champion Lady Amateur. JP McManus also picked up the Champion Owner prize for the third year in a row and his 21st time in total.
It must be increasingly frustrating for the rest to see the dominance of just one stable. 9 of the 12 Grade One races across the week at Punchestown were won by Willie Mullins-trained horses and in each of the other 3 Grade One races his horses finished second.
The stable sent out a total of 17 winners over the five days which is 2 less than they managed in 2021, but it still represents a significant haul when compared to the rest.
This season in Ireland Willie Mullins bettered his previous best both in terms of individual winners (237) and total prize money earned (€7.3 million). To try and put these figures into perspective the previous record for number of winners trained in a season was 212. The prize money haul equates to more than 10% of the entire prize money on offer for this year, both Flat and National Hunt combined. Aidan O’Brien’s runners on the Flat in Ireland last year won a total of €4.6 million.
Willie Mullins’ nearest challengers for the trainers’ title are barely visible in his rearview mirror at this stage. Gordon Elliott ran 47 horses at Punchestown last week (8 more than he ran at the meeting last year), but a minor victory in the opening race on Tuesday and the Charity Race on Saturday were his only winners as he finished the season almost €3.5 million shy of Mullins in the earnings stakes and with 49 winners less. Henry de Bromhead trained 4 winners at the meeting last year, but drew a blank this time despite having 31 runners (more or less the same number of runners he has had in recent years).
Two other leading National Hunt trainers, Joseph O’Brien and Jessica Harrington, have decided to make Flat racing their prime focus and this was evident by their reduced numbers of runners at Punchestown. In the last 3 years Joseph O’Brien’s Punchestown Festival runners have fallen from 25 - 5 - 3. Jessica Harrington has had great success at Punchestown down the years, but her number of runners this time was half what she sent out in either 2021 or 2022 with just 9 runners this time.
Grade One wins at Punchestown for Emmet Mullins, Martin Brassil and John Kiely show that given the right material there are many trainers out there that can deliver, but for the high-rolling owners looking for glory there was little to suggest from last week that they will be heading anywhere other than Closutton for some time to come.
Thursday evening’s Goffs Punchestown sale which took place in the parade ring after racing was yet another example of how the National Hunt game is no longer really for ordinary people. The average hammer price of the 22 lots offered was €194,762, with the top price paid a cool €500,000 for a horse that won a point-to-point just six days previously.
The crowds at Punchestown were solid across the week with the five-day total up almost 5,000 on last year at 120,727. The most significant element to the attendance figures was the spike in numbers that attended the final day’s racing on Saturday. The ‘Family Day’ is now rivalling Friday in terms of numbers and saw 32,208 turn up this year compared to 18,892 on the same day twelve months ago.
I wonder how many of the 120,000 that went to Punchestown across the week actually bought their own ticket. I went over on Thursday with a group of locals from my area on the Curragh, and while it is only a small sample, none of the eleven paid for a ticket. I know another six locals that went on Wednesday and Friday and again none of them bought a ticket.
Maybe it’s the easy availability of free tickets that helps swell the crowds at Punchestown and it could be something other courses could look at exploiting. Rather than ‘free entry days’ at races the courses might be better off bumping up the prices and then giving bundles of tickets away to local businesses and regular supporters. People love to think they are getting something for nothing.
There were eleven odds-on favourites across the week at Punchestown which is not ideal, but as seven of them were Cheltenham Festival winners from the previous month it has to be expected. Remarkably the only odds-on shot to get beaten was the Gold Cup winner Galopin Des Champs.
One observation from my day at Punchestown was how relatively inefficient some of the Tote staff carrying handheld machines were. They appear to be mostly students drafted in for the big days and I’m not sure whether it’s a combination of a lack of training and/or a lack of incentive, but I’d say there is a huge volume of business that is passing them by.
Imagine if the on-course bookies were similarly allowed to let their staff roam around the bars and restaurants touting for business, how much more would they increase their turnover by?
Ted Walsh announcing on Saturday that he was hanging up his microphone represents the end of an era for horse racing coverage on RTE. Himself and Robert Hall did a huge amount for the profile of the sport over the last 40 years. We often take it for granted that our national broadcaster will show all the big meetings, but since the passing of Colm Murray horse racing wouldn’t have too many real friends within the ranks in Donnybrook and Walsh and Hall did a lot to keep the sport firmly on their radar. Ted Walsh in particular was pretty close to being the perfect pundit for a sports show - extremely knowledgeable on all aspects of the game, witty, entertaining and never afraid to speak his mind - but he must have also been a nightmare for his producers. You could never be sure what he was going to say next which made RTE’s racing coverage compulsive viewing for so many for so long.
TV coverage of horse racing took another blow last week when it was announced that the Epsom Derby will be run at the unusually early time of 1.30pm on Saturday 3rd June to avoid a clash with the FA Cup Final. Racing in Ireland has come off second best in a number of similar clashes with GAA matches down the years and while it’s disappointing as a racing fan to see the sport pushed into the shadows by higher profile events that is unfortunately the reality.
Finally, amidst all the predictability of National Hunt racing at the moment it was great to see Shark Hanlon’s bargain-buy Hewick get back on track at Sandown after his heavy fall at Cheltenham. It was also nice to see Rachael Blackmore team up with her old boss for the big win. With summer pastures beckoning for most of the equine stars, it’s only the beginning for Hewick who will no doubt be seen at a festival near you over the coming months sandwiched between trips to France and America.
