LISTOWEL’S 2024 Harvest Festival was hailed as a “fantastic week” by the course’s Pat Healy, but he lamented the lack of mixed cards at the meeting and called on Horse Racing Ireland to reintroduce joint National Hunt and flat days to the Kingdom. Close to 100,000 racegoers attended across the seven days at Listowel, including over 28,000 for Friday’s Ladies Day meeting and 25,000 on Guinness Kerry National day.

Healy told The Irish Field: “With 96,000 people coming through the gates over the seven days, that type of turnout means your festival is holding up and people are coming back, bringing other new people with them. It was a fantastic week.

“We were delighted that the track held up, our clerk of the course Paul Moloney was pleased on that front. There were loads of local successes, and that really adds to it. Eric McNamara had a terrific week, including for some Killarney owners, Eoin McCarthy and Tom Cooper got on the scoresheet and Ross Sugrue rode his first winner under rules.

“I might be biased, but I thought the meeting had everything. The hard work of the committee, racecourse personnel and people of Listowel paid off.”

Flat approach

A coup to have Ryan Moore riding at the track for the first time on Tuesday helped to boost attendance levels, but Healy feels that Listowel’s cards with flat racing only are not resonating to the same level as National Hunt meetings.

“I’m not picking a fight with anyone whatsoever and can only hope we look after our own affairs as best we can, but I was personally disappointed with our Monday here,” he explained.

“It was a festival day but it should have felt more like one. The crowd could have been stronger. Some of the feedback I received was that people were staying in the bars around town because they didn’t want to come out to the track for an all-flat card. Ryan Moore definitely helped add a couple of thousand people to our gate on Tuesday, but my feeling is that it shouldn’t be up to Listowel to be asking people like Ryan to take time out of their busy schedules to ride here. I’m all for flat racing and love it, but I do think a mix of five flat races and three National Hunt races would have made a big difference to our gate on Monday. I think it’s wrong that we can’t have mixed cards. Galway is allowed to have them. I think we could have had Beyonce, Madonna and Taylor Swift playing here on the Monday and people still wouldn’t have come when it was an all-flat card!

“We’ll be in touch with Horse Racing Ireland about the chances of a mixed card for Monday and Tuesday, because those fixtures are lagging behind our National Hunt days.”

Mid-week focus

With a mid-week slot for the Kerry National working well for the track, does Healy feel there could be scope for other major meetings to sample a switch away from weekend racing to stand alone from other sporting events?

“The Kerry National is a sort of traditional day that people seem to keep coming out for. It’s a bit like Thyestes Day at Gowran Park in January; a day you don’t really worry about the weather because it’s in people’s calendars,” he said.

“You can look at the Punchestown Festival too and see how people go to the Grade 1 races there in the middle of the week. To stretch it a bit further to the biggest flat race of all, the Epsom Derby, some people say it shouldn’t be on a Saturday because it’d have the sporting calendar to itself on a Wednesday. I think there’s a lot to be said for it.”

It was also reported that Listowel sold out all of its ‘Party Pack’ deals for each of its first three days. Under the bundle offer, for a cost of €25, racegoers received admission, a burger and chips, a pint of larger or stout and a €5 betting voucher.