Curragh Sunday 15/09

byronbay2 wrote: »

Anyone know of any free or reduced-price tickets for The Curragh tomorrow? Paddy Power used to offer free tickets but none this year. €30 is a bit steep. Will people be selling tickets for €20 (or less) outside the course at 13.00 tomorrow? Any advice welcome.

Well this is a bit obvious but my advise is buy the 20 quid ones outside the turnstile so, they will no doubt be trying to get rid . Worst comes to worst , pay full price at gate .

I think Mabs Cross wins this.

Just came

Funny watching these AJ horses getting constantly bet off the boards.

I attended the Curragh on Sunday for the first time since the re-developments.
Here are my thoughts:
Arrival
Heavy traffic on approach from N7 southbound. The traffic snaked down the off ramp and well onto the hard shoulder. It took us 15mins from the off-ramp to park the car. The main entrance has changed to the right of the Turf Club building, which means a longer walk from the usual grass car-park. It took us 10mins to reach the entrance. There are a few lads driving large golf carts to ship those who cant manage the walk due to old age/high heels/lazeness. Strangely, there is no pedestrian crossing across the main road which meant a Garda had to act as lollipop lady. The new entrance is well styled and modern looking and plenty of turnstiles to speed up entrance. I hadn't bought a ticket so myself and my mate were looking for the price list which was nowhere to be found. Not even when we approached the box office was there a price list in sight. What a glaring omission!

The new layout:
On walking through the turnstiles, you immediately hit the parade ring. At first glance, it appeared to be a bumper crowd there. Very hard to see the parade ring, doesn't seem to be tiered levels at all (Cheltenham has the best parade ring in racing and they could have learned from them). The betting ring is right on top of the parade ring, it was fairly wedged in there, with all the usual faces. The grandstand is not as steeped as Leopardstown (Im guessing 4inch steps as opposed to 8inch steps at Leopardstown). The new roof is spectacular looking and you'd wonder how it stays up at all. They had a marquee between the 1F and 2F pole which blocked the view down the straight (you could only see the straight 7F race from about the 3F pole.
Facilities:
The main indoor is a large concourse, where everything blends into one.There are no kiosks for sweets and minerals, only an ice-cream van down the west end of the track. We went to the cafeteria style lunch area. There was a big queue but it moved well and the burger and chips was hot and tasted fine. We had to wait about 2mins for a seat to free up (cafeteria style benches) - they need to add more seats. There is a Paddy Power in the middle and plenty of Tote stands. We weren't drinking but there didn't seem to be big queues for a beer.
Overall, its a huge improvement on the run down Curragh from before. But, some glaring omissions that seem so obvious (such as the pedestrian crossing, no price lists at the gate and the coffee kiosks) - how did they not think of them? I was stunned to see this morning that they only got a mediocre 10,075 through the gate. It felt like double that, which suggests it cant cope with a large crowd
https://www.racingpost.com/news/latest/curragh-boss-pat-keogh-happy-with-crowd-but-admits-more-work-still-to-be-done/400067