Festival goes down drain

The happiness that greeted the Government's decision yesterday to allow a resumption of racing on Easter Monday disappeared for many last night with the news that the Punchestown Festival has been cancelled.

The decision to pull the plug on the meeting, which had a prize fund of close on £1 million, was taken after the Punchestown track failed a course inspection yesterday afternoon.

A Turf Club inspection team that included the clerk of the course, Joe Collins, and the inspector of courses, Bill McLernon, couldn't give the track to go ahead to race on its scheduled festival dates of April 24th-27th.

The Punchestown track has been plagued by controversy since complications developed over a new drainage system which was installed last year.

A fixture had to be abandoned last October due to holes in the ground and a number of fixtures before Christmas took place on a makeshift track on the inner of the main racecourse. It is understood that that inner racecourse also failed to pass yesterday's inspection.

Due to the foot-and-mouth crisis, the Turf Club had been awaiting clearance from the Department of Agriculture to inspect the track, but yesterday's D-Day has resulted in disappointment.

Leopardstown is set to host the resumption with an all-Flat card on Easter Monday.

The Turf Club's fixtures committee is meeting today to draw up a new schedule for the sport after a 39-day blank spell to date.

Providing there is no further outbreak of foot-and-mouth on the island of Ireland, it will mean there will have been a 50day racing drought and the sport's authorities face a herculean task in trying to reschedule lost fixtures.

Nevertheless, the Department of Agriculture's statement yesterday of an April 16th resumption was described as "great news" by the Turf Club's chief executive, Brian Kavanagh.

The National Hunt branch of the sport has got the the green light to resume on April 19th.

However, Minister Joe Walsh added that point-to-point racing is still banned because they "are held on farms and non-enclosed areas and cannot be regulated in the same way".

The Irish team for Saturday's National is now down to three after reports yesterday that Venetia Williams is taking over the training of Inis Cara.