Dundalk planning decision due in March Dundalk Stadium will know by the start of the Cheltenham Festival whether it will be able to provide all-weather jumps racing at the Co Louth venue. Plans for the €3.5 million floodlit national hunt track were revealed in December after the venue collected the Racecourse of the Year award at the HRI Awards in Leopardstown. However, Dundalk Racing (1999) Ltd only submitted their planning application to Dundalk Town Council for the new facility last week. The venue – Ireland’s only all-weather racecourse - is seeking permission for the “widening of the existing horse racing track at two sections and the provision of fences for jump racing”. As part of the application, they are also looking to install two oil tanks and boiler containers for undersoil heating to the new area of the track. Planning officials at Dundalk Town Council will weigh up the proposals in the coming weeks with a decision on whether to approve or refuse the application due on Tuesday March 11th – the first day of the Cheltenham Festival. Plans for the proposed new facility at Dundalk received a mixed response from the racing community when they were unveiled before Christmas. The proposal is something of a hybrid with an undersoil-heated grass surface envisaged on two new straights and the current polytrack all-weather surface on the flat course used on the bends. Obstacles will be placed on the grass straights. “It will be turf on both straights, a special design that will give excellent drainage, and the undersoil heating will mean it will be an all-weather facility. We’re totally confident it can work. It’s designed for good ground horses and it will allow those horses have a programme, instead of what can happen now with trainers and owners having to say in September or October that they’ll wait until the spring to run their horse again,” Dundalk’s chief executive Jim Martin told The Irish Times in December. He said that issues will have to be sorted out in terms of funding and also fixtures but it is the Stadium’s hope to have the facility open by 2016 if it is given the go ahead.
