Leopardstown success shows Dublin Racing Festival is galloping past Cheltenham on value

Nine years in, the appeal of lots of Grade One races, cheaper tickets and accommodation make Dublin the place to go

Michael O’Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, had two reasons to be cheerful after the Irish Champion Hurdle at the Dublin Racing Festival on Sunday. His seven-year-old mare, Brighterdaysahead, had just won the feature race. And she was cheered back to the winner’s enclosure by a sellout crowd that included several thousand visiting racegoers from Britain.

“The Dublin Racing Festival has been a great success and certainly it’s the first time you’ve seen a lot of English people coming over for the racing,” O’Leary said. “It’s a great festival in its own right, and they’re all very welcome. I hope they flew Ryanair.”

Since his airline has nearly two-thirds of the market for flights between the UK and Ireland, it was more of a certainty than a hope. For decades, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, in Paris in early October, was British racegoers’ big weekend abroad, and reckoned to be the second-biggest annual exodus of British fans for a sporting event, with only the Le Mans 24-hour race drawing more. Less than a decade into its existence, however, the DRF is coming up fast on the Arc’s inside. Continue reading...