Punchestown Festival crowds expected to top 110,000 and set new course record

The Punchestown authorities are aiming to set new record crowd figures at Irish racing's National Hunt festival in two weeks' time, although those travelling to the Co

Kildare track are unlikely to see the Cheltenham winner Windsor Park in action.

Dermot Weld’s Neptune winner successfully reverted to the flat when scoring at Gowran on Saturday, a sixth win in eight starts over the past nine months, and the trainer reckons the horse could be due a break.

“I will discuss it with Dr Lambe [the owner] but at the moment I would say it is unlikely he will go to Punchestown,” Weld said. “He has been on the go for quite a while. But we will see closer to the time.”

Record attendance

Windsor Park remains among the early entries declared for the three-mile Irish Daily Mirror Novice Hurdle on the second day of a five-day festival worth over €2.5 million and which last year attracted a record overall attendance tally of 106,689.

"Our target for this year is 110,000," said Punchestown spokesperson, Shona Dreaper. "The Saturday crowd last year of 29,042 is the largest we've had in the past five years."

The largest ever single day crowd at Punchestown came at the height of the Celtic Tiger years when 32,883 crammed into the track.

Entries for the first two days of the 2015 festival have been announced, with 25 remaining in the €200,000 Bibby Financial Services Gold Cup, including half a dozen from champion trainer Willie Mullins.

They include the defending champion Boston Bob as well as the Cheltenham Gold Cup runner up Djakadam, but also the outstanding RSA winning novice Don Poli, who holds an entry in the Growise Champion Novice Chase on the opening day of the festival too.

With Mullins’s other outstanding novice, Vautour, also left in the latter event, the trainer, who trained 13 festival winners in 2013, has the option of keeping apart the joint-favourites for next season’s Cheltenham Gold Cup.

Lucrative climax

Other Mullins stars on target for the lucrative climax of the Irish jumps season include the Champion Hurdle winner Faugheen, as well as other outstanding novices such as Douvan and Un De Sceaux.

Whatever the final make up of the Mullins team for Punchestown’s Gold Cup, they look like facing a strong cross-channel challenge, including David Pipe’s Ballynagour, who made Silviniaco Conti pull out all the stops at Aintree last Thursday.

“He’s come out of Liverpool well and we are definitely thinking of a trip to Punchestown. The horse has had a light season and he’s not the easiest to get right so we’d like to go to Ireland,” Pipe said.

Another possible raider is the Gold Cup stalwart, The Giant Bolster, whose trainer David Bridgewater reported: “Everything has been good with him since Cheltenham. He’s getting a bit older and wiser and probably doesn’t try as hard as he used to. The trip to Ireland will be something different and it might perk him up a bit.”

The opening day feature at Punchestown will be the €200,000 Boylesports Champion Chase which sees the veteran title-holder Sizing Europe among a strong list of entries.

Ballynagour has the two-mile entry as well as the Gold Cup, while Willie Mullins has left in the novices, Vautour and Un De Sceaux.

Hidden Cyclone will attempt to secure an elusive Grade One success in this race and trainer ‘Shark’ Hanlon reports the horse has emerged unscathed from his Cheltenham outing in the Ryanair, where he picked up an injury.

“I think he hit himself jumping the second and he didn’t jump well after that. He is normally a sound jumper so I would say he was feeling it,” Hanlon said. “Two miles at Punchestown suits him well, as he proved in the Tied Cottage, and hopefully he will run another big race.”