Newly titled Irish Champions Festival aiming for attendance levels boost

It’s no longer called Irish Champions Weekend and changing the name of Irish flat racing’s showpiece event could help boost public interest in next week’s action at Leopardstown and the Curragh.

Next weekend’s €4.5 million extravaganza featuring half a dozen Group One races has been rebranded as the Irish Champions Festival.

It will be the 10th renewal of Irish racing’s most valuable dates of the year which were originally conjoined to promote the sport here to an international audience.

This time a more local market will be in the spotlight too after disappointing attendance levels last year.

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Just more than 17,000 attended the fixtures at Leopardstown and the Curragh, a 28 per cent slide on pre-pandemic figures in 2019. The inaugural “ICW” in 2014 had an official total crowd of 24,168.

There were 10,280 at Leopardstown in 2022 while bad weather contributed to just 6,742 going to the Curragh last year.

On the racing front, the festival’s most valuable contest, the €1.25 million Royal Bahrain Irish Champion Stakes, has sustained a blow with the exciting French star Ace Impact ruled out.

The unbeaten French Derby winner bypasses Leopardstown in favour of going straight for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe for which he is a 4-1 favourite.

A spokesman for Ace Impact’s owners was reported in media in France that preference was for keeping the colt fresh for the Arc.

“There are only three weeks between the Champion Stakes and the target,” a Gousserie Racing spokesman said. “It is not a long time because the transport takes a while, it takes nearly 20 hours. The plane was therefore the best option, but we wanted to keep the horse fresh.”

Nevertheless, with the Juddmonte International winner Mostahdaf topping ante-post lists, and the highly rated German Derby winner Fantastic Moon still in the mix, Leopardstown officials were keen on Monday to highlight the appeal of horses that will be in Foxrock on Saturday week.

Aidan O’Brien confirmed on Monday that the dual-Derby hero Auguste Rodin will be joined by last year’s winner Luxembourg in leading the home defence.

“It would have been nice to have had such a very significant runner [Ace Impact] but he’s got choices and I don’t think the trainer is keen to travel with the three-year-old,” Leopardstown’s chief executive Tim Husbands said.

“John Gosden [Mostahdaf’s trainer] has done well here before and we’re encouraged he will see it as an opportunity.

“Fantastic Moon was supplemented last time round and the vibe remains positive around him running. If we can get an international field, it would be fantastic,” he added.

The Leopardstown boss is also hopeful the newly titled event can pick up the momentum of a general increase in attendance levels this year.

Horse Racing Ireland’s statistics for the first half of 2023 saw a 7.6 per cent climb to 544,147 overall.

The Galway festival earlier this month saw an overall attendance of 122,362, up almost 5,700 on 2022. July’s three-day Irish Derby festival saw a 25 per cent increase on last year, although Derby day itself was marginally down.

“A lot of those figures are in relation to National Hunt race meetings but we’re hoping we’ll see a little bit of a bounce. Hopefully the weather will be kind to us.

“We’ve had a decent summer so far, so I’d like to think we’ll do better than we did last year and we’re tracking well in that respect,” said Husbands, who explained the title tweak.

“The general feeling was when you’re trying to see to a different market you need different tools at your disposal.

“By positioning it as a festival I think it will capture the imagination more for people that don’t traditionally go horse racing but might go racing during the major festivals like Punchestown or the Dublin Racing Festival or Fairyhouse.

“It conjures up some sense of a customer experience that perhaps they haven’t thought about going to before. The package of entertainment we’ve put around it will lift it to a different level, and I think it helps us to explain that,” he added.

Explaining Auguste Rodin’s dismal flop in last month’s King George at Ascot has proved even beyond the Ballydoyle team.

Ryan Moore all but pulled up the colt in the straight as Hukum and Westover fought out the finish and Auguste Rodin has a major task in trying bounce back from that at Leopardstown.

“Really, we don’t know what happened to Auguste in the King George. He was drawn very wide and trapped very wide and he came off the bridle a lot earlier than Ryan would have thought.

“His first impulse was to protect the horse and he was very surprised what happened. Before he had to ask too much, he just pulled him up and that’s the reality of the situation.

“It’s probably a blessing in disguise as if he came off the bridle at the stage he was probably going to get a very tough race. For a baby three-year-old he was probably lucky he didn’t get into a brawl and he came home very well,” O’Brien said on Monday.

He also indicated Kyprios could make his delayed seasonal debut by defending his title in the Curragh’s featured Comer Group Irish St Leger on Sunday week.

Kyprios sustained a joint problem in the spring and O’Brien reported: “He could run in the Leger, but if he runs it would be for a run. I couldn’t imagine him being forward enough to be that competitive in that race, but you would still say that he should run a very good race.”