Listowel© Photo Healy Racing
A lot will get found out during ‘Champions Weekend.’ The scene could be set for Australia to definitively justify those “best ever” claims with a spectacular performance. Long-term ambitions to turn the event into the first leg of an international Triple-Crown will get a crucial first examination. And it could also be a fascinating test of just how susceptible to advertising Ireland’s sporting public is when racing tries to lure it through the gates.
Officials are aiming at a 19,000 total attendance between the two days – 11,000 at Leopardstown and 8,000 at the Curragh. In the longer term Leopardstown’s authorities aspire to Christmas festival levels for their Champion Stakes card. But considering The Fugue won last year’s Champion Stakes in front of an 8,600 crowd, a 2,400 hike will be no inconsiderable first step. The Curragh is also looking at a near-2,000 increase on last year’s Leger tally.
Everyone is at pains to stress that there’s more to ‘Champions Weekend’ than a simple crowd tot but acknowledging that hardly makes attendance levels irrelevant either, especially on the back of an extensive marketing campaign that has been impressively hard to miss already and is likely to crank up even more in the next dozen days.
The reality is that a significant part of that advertising will revolve around non-horsey stuff but that won’t stop awareness of Irish racing’s newest and most expensive shop-window percolating through even to those whose awareness of the sport is nominal at best. So it really will be fascinating to see if racing at its best – and no one can seriously argue the Champions Weekend line-up isn’t that - is actually enough to get people through the gates.
Those of us reasonably au fait with the game already suspect the answer. If Sea The Stars couldn’t get them piling in, then Australia won’t. But that doesn’t make ‘Champions Weekend’ a futile concept. Like it or not, concentration is the trend in the sport worldwide. This is a worthwhile attempt by Irish racing to sell itself, and a lot of it does have an international element. But those of us parked here will be only too aware of more parochial realities, one being that the public has a habit of voting with their feet.
With that in mind it hardly looks like D-Day level planning to have the second day of ‘Champions Weekend’ clashing with the first day of Listowel’s festival. The suspicion is that something as non-digital and un-market-researched as the hoary old adage about most punters in the south not crossing the road to watch a flat race might be behind it. And that mightn’t be wrong either. But the option might at least have been left open for some southern ‘good-ole-boys’ to travel to HQ, especially since first impressions will count for so much.
And it will be a couple of days in salt-of-the-earth, non-global Listowel that will provide a sobering reminder of just how people here really do vote with their feet. There will be no Australia in the Kerry National, or a Leading Light on Ladies Day, but each fixture will pull about 27,000 to the banks of the Feale, well over double the total tally for both days of ‘Champions Weekend.’
That’s a salutary reminder of the task involved in selling ‘Champions Weekend’ at home, and if some of the more grandiose ambitions for it are to be realised. The logic behind why so many go to Listowel, or to Galway, has nothing to do with the quality of action out on the track and everything to with habit and history. Trying to turn ‘Champions Weekend’ into such a racing habit, and perhaps more importantly, a social one, is a mammoth task. But everything starts with a first step.
Paddy Power’s half-year returns got a lot of attention, principally focussing on how a series of sporting results had impacted on profit margins. Naturally not too many tears will have been shed about that, but anyone under illusions about their unique abilities to beat the bookies might focus on the only word that mattered in the blitz of coverage – profit: a bit less of it than usual but still profit. The supposed Power tale of woe had the air of a billionaire complaining that his diamond shoes are too tight!
It will be intriguing to see if Sole Power lines up for the Haydock Sprint Cup because if he manages to break his duck over six furlongs it will bring up perhaps one of the most remarkable clean-sweeps in modern racing history.
Throw his Nunthorpe and Kings Stand victories on top of Slade Power’s Diamond Jubilee and July Cup and victory at Haydock will give Eddie Lynam and the Power family a clean sweep of all five of Britain’s Group 1 sprints. Ground conditions will probably be critical but the horse does look to have got a new lease of life for having Richard Hughes on his back. The strength in depth among Irish sprinters now means it looks like the defending champ, Gordon Lord Byron, is the one to beat. Since it’s not so long since sprinters here were reputed to be as quick as Budweiser drays, it just shows how quickly things can change.
And finally, as excuses for iffy rides go, New Zealand jockey David Walker’s is a doozy – his hands cramped. That he was later filmed on CCTV picking up his winnings from a match bet with another horse in the race indicated any cramp quickly wore off. The race was at the Awapuni track over a fortnight ago and has provoked a full-blown scandal down-under. It’s worth searching for the race, and pondering why the racing public are disposed to believe the worst sometimes. And no amount of advertising will change that.
