On Monday Navan staged its rescheduled fixture that had been rained off 48 hours earlier, although the commercial costs of having to postpone the meeting have been described as massive.
Officials at the Horse Racing Ireland operated track face refunding up to €50,000 in lost hospitality revenue alone for the fixture that had been due to kick off the Navan Racing Festival on Saturday.
That prime slot had to be switched to Monday due to parts of the course being waterlogged.
Just how bitter a pill that was to swallow got underlined on Sunday when an official attendance of just under 5,000 was only slightly down on the corresponding 2024 figure.
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That was despite the eyes of most of the nation being trained on Budapest and the Irish football teams near miraculous progression to a World Cup playoff date in a game that kicked off in the middle of Navan’s action.
Navan’s general manager Ciarán Flynn was pleased with how crowd figures held up for Sunday’s Troytown Chase programme despite such a high-profile counter attraction. An official tally of 4,962 was only marginally down from 5,003 last year.
“I was happy with it being more or less the same as last year, given the circumstances with the week we had. You want to try to and improve your figure year on year. But given the week we had, and Saturday being cancelled, I was happy to sustain those numbers this year,” he said.
In terms of Sunday’s attendance figure, Flynn made a distinction between paying customers and industry personnel at Sunday’s meeting but confirmed the official tally included both.
“Actually, our paying customer [total] was up on last year, fairly significantly. The difference I suppose was industry.
“Last year was over 700 through AIR [Association of Irish Racecourses card holders]. This year we only had 500. So, paying customer was up, which we’re happy with. Obviously, the industry figure was slightly lower,” Flynn said.
Ahead of the looming winter, and the inevitable potential for weather disruption, Navan counting the cost of a postponement is a reality many other tracks will have to reckon with.
It’s long been acknowledged that refixed dates rarely attract the same level of commercial turnover or people through the gates. It’s a pattern that emerged again even days before the weekend when bad weather first hit the country.
“We got really bad rain here Wednesday into Thursday morning, and I saw from Wednesday morning ticket sales really slowing down through to the weekend.
“We track our figures from two months out and each week the numbers are tracking stronger, tracking higher than the same time last year, but on the Wednesday when the weather started getting really bad, ticket sales stalled,” Flynn commented.
“I can tell you for hospitality alone on Saturday we’ll have to refund probably €40[000] to €50,000 in hospitality alone, and that’s not taking account our general admission. We will have suppliers, security, all that sort of stuff that we will have to pay, because they were obviously due to be here, they’d staff organised, so it’s a massive hit to be honest.
“It will be interesting to see from a media rights perspective will we get a kick today on a Monday because it’s a quieter day and there’s good racing on. That will be interesting to see but we won’t know that figure until next month.
“But it’s important for the industry goes ahead today, that we don’t lose the racing, which is obviously important,” he added.
On the track Gordon Elliott’s Found A Fifty landed the Bar One Fortria Chase for a second year in a row, ultimately proving five lengths too good for the favourite Dinoblue.
Elliott also won the first two races on Monday but his odds-on favourite The Yellow Clay failed to get to grips with Colonel Mustard in the Lismullen Hurdle.
However, it was a sparkling debut over fences by the Cheltenham Supreme winner Kopes Des Bordes that was the most impressive performance of the day. He is already as low as 7-4 favourite for the Arkle at Cheltenham in March.
On the back of Final Demand’s impressive start over fences the day before it underlined Willie Mullins’s strength in depth in the novice division.
In other news, Elliott’s Stellar Story is the sole Irish based contender left in the mix to contest Britain’s first Grade One of the season, Saturday’s Betfair Chase at Haydock.
Just seven entries remain in the race after Monday’s latest acceptance stage, including last year’s winner Royalle Pagaille who could pull off a hat-trick in the race. Topping betting lists, though, is last year’s runner-up Grey Dawning and the Irish Grand National hero Haiti Couleurs.
Grey Dawning’s trainer Dan Skelton said: “It certainly wasn’t fitness that got him beat last year and he’s fit again now. He’s at the peak of his life in terms of age and hopefully it will all be enough.
“We’ve just got him really prepared for it, he’s had an away day and went the same day that Panic Attack [Paddy Power Gold Cup winner] did and has done everything asked of him. I couldn’t have asked for a better preparation.”
