Irish Summer Flat Festival

Slim is right.

The Irish pattern is inteneded to be complementary to the UK pattern rather than a separate and complete entity of its own. The top races in Ireland depend on participation from abroad to maintain their status, so they have to fit into the international calendar.
 
Grey said:
Slim is right.

The Irish pattern is inteneded to be complementary to the UK pattern rather than a separate and complete entity of its own. The top races in Ireland depend on participation from abroad to maintain their status, so they have to fit into the international calendar.
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Nicely put. You can't make up a new without upsetting the pattern.
 
Grey said:
Slim is right.

The Irish pattern is inteneded to be complementary to the UK pattern rather than a separate and complete entity of its own. The top races in Ireland depend on participation from abroad to maintain their status, so they have to fit into the international calendar.
Click to expand...

I understand that, but it doesn't preclude Irish racing from trying to develop a series of races that achieves both the below objectives:

1. fits in with the international calendar
2. offers decent opportunity for black-type animals at a range of distances.

The two of these don't need to be mutually exclusive. For instance, there is no reason why there can't be a 1m4f group 2 race in Ireland all year. There is no reason why there can't be a decent sprint in Ireland all year. Who cares if English horses win it...it's all cyclical anyway....we'll have good sprinters too soon.
 
Not sure about them not trying to breed sprinters. We breed a lot of fast early types on purpose. I would say the majority of stallions standing won over less than a mile.

Grey is right. I think at one stage Paddy P was trying to misrepresent it's revenue from racing by taking Irish racing as as a separate entity. When in fact Uk and Irish racing is part of the same pie. The pattern could not exist without co-operation and the two existing in tandem. It's the same show being run in two different jurisdictions....the same pie. (mmmm... pie)
 
Bar the Bull said:
I understand that, but it doesn't preclude Irish racing from trying to develop a series of races that achieves both the below objectives:

1. fits in with the international calendar
2. offers decent opportunity for black-type animals at a range of distances.

The two of these don't need to be mutually exclusive. For instance, there is no reason why there can't be a 1m4f group 2 race in Ireland all year. There is no reason why there can't be a decent sprint in Ireland all year. Who cares if English horses win it...it's all cyclical anyway....we'll have good sprinters too soon.
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Fair enough, but it means looking at the gaps in the UK calendar as well as the Irish.

By the way, the Royal Whip used to be a Gr3 12f race until it dropped to 10f in 1995 and became a Gr2 race in 1998.
 
PS - I was going to agree with Bar because I like the concept, but the more I thought about it the less viable I felt it was (the 1m4f race).

At the moment the pattern looks like:

May Tatts GC
Jun Derby/Coronation
MidJun POW
Early Jul Eclipse
MidJul Irish Derby/GP de Paris/St Cloud
LateJul KGVI&QEDS
Aug International
Sep Irish Champion
Oct Arc
LateOct Champion

No reason why the Royal Whip couldn't be put back up to 1m4f though.
 
Basically most people have just given me a reason why the useless status quo is being maintained, with no constructive suggestions
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The obvious date to build something new around is the Irish Oaks weekend. It might need to be put back a week so that if falls midway between Royal Ascot and the Ebor meeting. There's certainly scope for a big stayers race I would have thought.

There's also a pretty good ten days of racing in Ireland starting with the Irish Champion Stakes, the Moyglare, the Galway September meeting, Laytown, the Irish Leger and National Stakes. Bringing those big Leop and Curragh meetings together on the same long weekend and tacking on Laytown as a prelude (tide permitting) might be the way to go.

By the way, there was no NH meeting in Britain or Ireland on Laytown's date this year, so why not get some of the UK-based jump jockeys over for a jumps v flat riders set-to on the beach? The races are framed to suit NH jockeys and the irish-based ones seem to enjoy riding there.
 
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