New 2 day National Hunt Festival at Leopardstown, February 2018

marvin80

This should be very popular and well attended.

http://www.leopardstown.com/race-meetings/race-information/news/press/BREAKING_NEWS_New_2_day_National_Hunt_Festival_at_Leopardstown__February_2018_/

"The Board of Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) has approved the creation of an exciting new two-day festival of jumps racing at Leopardstown, to be run for the first time on the weekend of Saturday February 3 and Sunday February 4 in 2018.
The BHP Insurance Irish Champion Hurdle will be the feature event on the first day, while the Stan James Irish Gold Cup will headline the Sunday card. Total prize-money for the weekend will be €1.5m in 2018.
The festival combines the feature races from Leopardstown’s current three stand-alone meetings in late January and mid-February, and is perfectly positioned in the calendar, equidistant from Leopardstown’s Christmas festival and the Cheltenham festival in mid-March.


Seven Grade 1 races and three Grade 2 events, along with both existing and new valuable handicaps (including the Coral.ie Hurdle), will feature in a two-day extravaganza in an initiative designed to build on the wonderful success of this year’s National Hunt festivals. The objective is to create a new jumps festival that becomes a destination in itself.


The two-day festival will offer prize-money of €1.5m in 2018 with plans to progressively increase that fund each year, rising to €2.1m in 2020. This represents an increase of 50% on this year’s prize-money for the equivalent races. The minimum race value for the weekend will be €75,000 for 2018, and by year three it is envisaged every race will have a minimum prize fund of €100,000"

finbarrk

Should attract a lot of UK horses and racegoers also.

but1er

Under 30 membership for 90 euro just got even more worth while. Really look forward to this