Irish Champions Weekend becomes Irish Champions Festival in 'subtle but important' change

Irish Champions Weekend is finished but, fear not, the blockbuster bash is going nowhere and has simply been renamed the Irish Champions Festival in a "subtle but important" rebrand.

The inaugural Irish Champion Weekend was in 2014 when the Irish Champion Stakes card at Leopardstown and the Irish St Leger at the Curragh were put back-to-back on a weekend in mid-September.

There are now six Group 1s on the programme, with the Flying Five Stakes upgraded in 2018 to join the National Stakes, Moyglare Stud Stakes and Irish St Leger as top level events on the Sunday card at the Curragh. The Irish Champion Stakes and the Matron Stakes are the two Group 1s at Leopardstown on Saturday. It is a 16-race extravaganza.

But after nine years as Irish Champions Weekend, the highest-quality two days on the Irish Flat racing calendar is now the Irish Champions Festival.

'We're trying to make sure there's a festival feel'

Explaining the decision to change what is widely seen as one of the biggest success stories in Irish racing, HRI director Paul Dermody said: "This is a subtle but important change. This is not a radical rebrand of any shape or form. It reflects the research being done into what was Irish Champions Weekend over the last year.

"Like any major racing festival, there are a number of key target audiences that you're looking at. The hardcore racing audience probably won't even feel this brand change and that's okay because from a racing perspective the racing is as good as ever and the human and equine stars that make up the weekend are still going to be there in force. That won't change."

He added: "What we wanted to do, though, was figure out where are we going to get our audiences from? What's got the most opportunity to grow in terms of target audiences? When you do that you look at what has made other festivals successful.

"When you look at racing festivals, albeit this is our international marquee Flat racing festival, most of our successful festivals tend to be jumps. So we're trying to make sure there's a festival feel to this particular weekend and to do that we're subtly changing the title of the event to suit that.

"We're going to make sure everyone knows what they're going to get beyond the racing. There's the music, the food, the fashion, the socialising and all that goes with it across both days. It's about educating people on the racing bit, but also making sure they understand if you're a social racegoer you know what the other layers that make up the event are."

The Irish Champions Festival, as it is now known, will be held at Leopardstown on September 9 and the Curragh on September 10 this yearCredit: Getty Images

Asked whether he thought the renaming of such a successful event in Irish racing could cause confusion, Dermody said: "If you look back to where this weekend came from, it was created by the industry and we're very mindful of our role in taking that, protecting it and growing it. We were never going to do anything that was going to take away from its position in the international racing calendar and we don't think this name change does that.

"The Irish bit is still there, but the weekend bit wasn't resonating as much as festival was when we tested it with the target audiences that we want to bring to the two days."

The Irish Champions Festival, as it is now known, will be held at Leopardstown on September 9 and the Curragh on September 10 this year.

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