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Brian O'Connor

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The January Waste Land

Leopardstown parade ringLeopardstown parade ring
© Photo Healy Racing

April may be the cruellest month but the new 'February Jumps Festival' looks like making January the dullest. The decision to create a new super €1.5 million National Hunt festival follows the racing trend towards showpiece concentrations of excellence. It will result in one superb weekend's action at Leopardstown. It will also reduce a substantial number of other weeks to mostly filler status and that's a debatable outcome for the sport overall.

Last week's announcement of the bumper two day festival comprising seven Grade 1 races headlined by the Irish Champion Hurdle on Saturday February 3, followed a day later by the Irish Gold Cup, was greeted with enthusiasm by industry professionals.

That's no surprise. There's a 50 per cent prizemoney increase involved in combining the feature races from the three stand-alone meetings Leopardstown has traditionally held in late January and early February. Prizemoney is projected to reach €2.1 million by 2020. Such money automatically puts most owners, trainers and jockeys onside.

Horse Racing Ireland says the objective is to create a new jumps festival that becomes a destination in itself. Yet it also makes a point of advertising its favourable position in the calendar regarding Cheltenham. That in itself is a tacit admission of the reality: Irish racing's most important race-meeting will always be held in Gloucestershire in March.

The Gold Cup/Hennessy fixture of old contained four Grade 1 races and was invariably interpreted through the prism of Cheltenham. So did the Irish Champion Hurdle and the Arkle. So does most everything that occurs in Ireland from October. Piling Grade 1's on top of each other in a single weekend isn't going to change that. Cheltenham will always be THE objective.

What's likely to change significantly though is the complexion of Ireland's racing programme in the first six to seven weeks of the year. Car ads might blithely insist change is good but it isn't automatically so. Constructive change should be an attempt to make things better. Instead in this case plenty could be lost since it's hard not to suspect it's essentially a move piggy-backing on the generally positive reviews of 'Irish Champions Weekend.'

That followed the international fashion for concentration in regards to the Arc, British Champions Day and the Breeders Cup. And it made sense to do it because the flat game here desperately needed a profile boost. The jumps sector has problems of its own but comparatively speaking profile isn't one of them. It also doesn't lack for festivals already.

Even remove the anomaly that Irish racing's most important fixture takes place in England and it has a definitive National Hunt festival already at Punchestown where the Cheltenham prism at least gets reduced to hindsight status.

But what this initiative really does is reduce most of the rest of the first two months of the year to near-irrelevance in terms of top quality action. And it's hard to see how that makes promotional sense.

There's a focus on the run-up to each those three stand-alone Leopardstown fixtures which sustains a valuable and continuous narrative. The Irish Champion Hurdle was a story in itself. So was the Irish Gold Cup. An exceptional novice such as Douvan going for the Irish Arkle in 2016 kept the sport in the headlines too.

At a time of year when there's a comparative lull in many more mainstream sports jump racing could regularly elbow its way into the spotlight. Now it will get the same attention for one weekend. And given football's overweening dominance of sporting priorities, there's a danger the Saturday action could slip down editorial agendas.

Final programme details have to be announced but the net impact of all this could see almost a month between the Grade 1 Naas Novice Hurdle and the new 'February Jumps Festival' during which Irish racing's most high profile and prestigious race will be a handicap - the Thyestes Chase.

The final half of February has always taken place under Cheltenham's looming shadow but now that shadow will stretch for most of the month. So with all the Grade 1 action squeezed into one spectacular 24 hour period, it's going to be a pretty hard sell to make over two months of other action feel anything but an after-thought.

Packing all the best eggs into one basket is a gamble in more ways than one. What happens for instance if the weather takes a hand in proceedings? But it's a much more substantial gamble in terms of depriving jump racing of a narrative that provides regular focal points during the long run up to Cheltenham.

Change is all well and good but this feels like a move for change's sake. Maybe it's a reaction to relatively low attendance figures. But financially attendances are little more than optics compared to the real media-rights deal anyway. And it will be a surprise if cross-channel representation increases significantly as a result.

The big selling point for those within the game is extra prizemoney. But there's nothing to stop that money being put into these races as they stand while maintaining racing's profile over a longer period of time. All told nothing was broken so bad that it required this much fixing.

Certainly the announcement of the festival on the eve of Royal Ascot rubbed some flat professionals up the wrong way. But that's no surprise considering how latent resentment about the rate of 'summer code' action at this time of year compared to the jumps went public last week.

It's actually very simple. Flat racing ideally takes place on quick ground. The best chance of that on this benighted wet rock are the four months of June, July, August and September. In contrast the best National Hunt conditions contain an ease. So the idea that there should be equality between the two during the summer is silly.

In their marrow, Irish people might prefer jumping. And the argument goes that jumping gets people through the gates. Except most meetings still don't get very many going to the trouble of going racing. And when there's so much TV money floating around it doesn't really seem to matter.

So give the flat the place it should get - in the sun. The business of Irish racing requires it. It might be another example of Joe Public knowing our place but there's no point pretending that isn't the Irish racing reality.

Actually any doubt about public indifference was compounded by a radio ad running last week plugging tickets for the Irish Derby. That's with a 6,000 restricted capacity including everyone working there. And still luring people to the Curragh requires advertising a fortnight beforehand. Roll up-Roll Up!