Punchestown Festival Reaches New Heights All Round Record attendances, Bookmaker and Tote turnovers were just some of the highs of the Irish National Hunt Festival last week. During a week that was blessed with fair weather, over 90, 868 racegoers attended the four day meeting at which a staggering 32,883 attended on Friday alone.Overall Bookmaker and Tote turnover figures increased by 11% and 28% respectively whilst attendances increased by 7% overall. Tuesday saw the second largest rise in attendances of the festival, growing by 2415, and those attendees witnessed an opening ceremony which provided a fitting atmosphere from the get go. There were four winners trained by UK trainers, each of which won a Grade 1 race and for the first time ever, the Guinness Punchestown Gold Cup went to a UK trained winner in the form of Neptune Collonges from the Paul Nicholls yard. Ferdy Murphy, Jonjo O´Neill and Nicky Henderson, all staunch supporters of Punchestown picked up the other three winning spots on what was a most definitely a UK Thursday. Paul Nicholls emerged as Leading Overseas Trainer of the festival and won 5 tonnes of any Gain Horse Feed, a prize worth ?2,500. The Leading Trainer of the week was Willie Mullins who secured the ?5,000 prize kindly sponsored by Conway Keane Auctioneers by training a double on the final day of the week while Ruby Walsh emerged as leading jockey yet again and also takes away a cheque for ?5,000. It was a week of winners all round, with 27 individual trainers training winners. Perhaps the best reception of the week was saved for Enda Bolger, Spotthedifference and J T McNamara, when they returned to winners´ enclosure, having secured Enda´s 10th La Touche Cup win in a row, surpassing the legendary P P Hogan´s record in the race. Commenting on hugely successful festival, Punchestown General Manager, Dick O´Sullivan stated 'It was a super week and fantastic to see so many records broken. Whilst the whole team worked equally hard to make it such, special mention should go to Sean Ryan, our track manager and his team. It was a monumental task to keep the ground right with the weather we experienced in April and they rose to the occasion. There was a super atmosphere in Punchestown and indeed Naas throughout the meeting and it was a thrill to see so many people having so much fun. On a personal note, I was equally thrilled to read David Ashforth´s racecourse review which placed Punchestown joint second on the overall table. Now though, we have the task of making the 2008 festival bigger and better again!'
