Paint

A lot of paint was spattered on the Curragh for the Guineas festival weekend but even as it shimmered in a rare blast of Sunday sunshine it was hard to escape the conclusion that a wonderful opportunity was lost to tear it all down.

It’s also difficult to not conclude the entire proposed one hundred million euro Curragh facelift is jinxed.

Years of planning hold-ups while the powers that be required vast swathes of time to remove vast numbers of digits from an even more vast bureaucratic fundament eventually came to an end - only for the world economy to go belly-up.

It’s hard to blame the Turf Club for now putting the venture on a long-finger. Perception wise in the current climate it would have stood out like a sore thumb for such a sporting project to proceed and the importance of perception should be realised in racing more than most areas.

The reality remains though that after a decade of capital development practically everywhere else around the country, the track that is Irish racing to the outside world looks like a relic of a long bygone era. Certainly, compared to international recourses of similar significance, the Curragh resembles something to pile bales into rather than customers.

Not that that will bother the more blinkered who reacted to the original redevelopment idea like a bunch of maiden aunts having their skirts lifted. A waste of cash that could be diverted into even greater prizemoney was the self-serving line, accompanied by digs about the futility of building facilities for sixty thousand when just over half that is the current course record attendance.

The lack of vision inherent in such an attitude is only now being matched by the level of whine about how things are going to the dogs economically.

But the sense of opportunity lost is only going to get greater with time. As could some pretty fundamental doubts about the focus of the recently stalled but already nostalgically remembered capital development programme.

The average racecourse attendance in Ireland is dropping like a stone. And it is going to continue to do so.

Every shred of evidence from around the world tells us that most meetings now are simply television fodder for stay-at-home punters betting their brains out on the exchanges. It doesn’t take any huge burst of imagination to see a future of empty stands – with hardly a bookmaker to be seen – and only professionals involved in the game actually present on-track. Just look at some of these so called ‘industry days’ and see what’s around the corner.

Instead the only crowds will be at festivals or prestige fixtures. And yet much of the last decade has been spent building up facilities at racecourses for customers that will rarely if ever darken the door.

That’s what makes the Curragh such a frustrating case. People will continue to attend quality fixtures and headquarters has more of them than anywhere else.

However compared to some recently developed, smartly kitted out, but often echoingly empty tracks elsewhere in Ireland, the Curragh still looks like it did when Bing Crosby warbled in front of the shed – sorry stand – in 1965.

Tearing the lot down and starting again would have been a concrete achievement of a time when the game was awash with money and the result could have been a flagship for Irish racing internationally.
Instead what we’ve got are coats of paint.