THIS weekend’s big freeze has thankfully come too late to disrupt the busy Christmas racing schedule which saw Leopardstown, Fairyhouse and Tramore return increased attendance numbers.

Mild conditions dominated the festive period, helping Leopardstown to attract a total of 62,748 racegoers to its four-day Festival, up 700 on the year before.

The meeting was boosted by the a number of intriguing clashes on the track. Dry and calm conditions also helped, though fog threatened to cancel racing on day one and also affected viewing on day two.

Over the four days there were wins for 15 trainers and 19 jockeys.

Tim Husbands, Leopardstown CEO said: “We are delighted with how this year’s Christmas Festival went. We are especially pleased to have brought our racedays to more people this year, with an increased attendance overall despite the challenging fog conditions on the first two days.”

Fairyhouse, where racing took place on New Year’s Day, was among the tracks to ride the wave of positive crowds during the festive window, with the card headlined by the Grade 3 YellowFord & Drumlin John & Chich Fowler Memorial Irish EBF Mares Chase.

“We were blessed with what was probably the best day of weather through the Christmas period, and the rain we needed in advance came to create beautiful jumping ground,” said Fairyhouse general manager Peter Roe.

“Our crowd was up on last year and our main restaurant was sold out, as well as there being a busy corporate section. We nearly ran out of racecards and that’s always a good sign.

“Having quality racing on offer is always so important, though. I thought Champ Kiely was a promising and fitting winner in the beginners’ chase named in honour of Bellshill, who Frank and Liz Motherway [joint-sponsors of the feature race] bred before going on to Grade 1 success for Willie.”

Fairyhouse is due to race three more times this month and will not be helped by the incoming cold spell.

“We have the Dan & Joan Moore Memorial Chase on Saturday of next week but the forecast is definitely concerning,” said Roe. “Temperatures are due to get very low in the coming days so we’ll be monitoring what materialises.”

Tramore general manager Owen Byrne was delighted with the turnout on New Year’s Day. “Gate receipts are most definitely up - I’d say we had 6,000 here,” he said. “The weather helped. The ground was heavy and if it had rained on the day we would have struggled.

“We had very good pre-sales. Students and seniors could buy a ticket for as little as €10 if they purchased early. We have been building this event as a family raceday for several years. A lot of people are back in the area for Christmas and this is their day out before they leave. I also think our after-race entertainment is important. We brought in a 12-piece brass band and some racegoers stayed for two hours after racing.”

Byrne acknowledged that ticket sales are ever-more important for smaller racecourses whose media rights payments can be adversely affected by clashes with other meetings. “The new media rights deal means that payments are largely based on turnover, so if your meeting is clashing with a lot of other fixtures then a good gate receipt is vital.”

Limerick appeared to be well supported over the duration of its four-day Christmas Festival, though The Irish Field was unable to attain crowd figures or comments from the track in time for publication this week.

Tote betting at Limerick was slightly up on St Stephen’s Day but down by approximately 25% on the other three days.