A decline in Irish racing's key metrics may be understandable - but the jumps figures are alarming

Horse Racing Ireland published its six-month performance statistics on Friday and they made for pretty grim reading. 

Everything from attendances, horses in training, field sizes, the number of runners, owners, on-course betting and sales returns were all down on the same period in 2023. This despite the fact that prize-money was up marginally (1.5  per cent) to €31 million.

It's not exactly a rosy vista and what was particularly disconcerting was the dramatic discrepancy between some of the Flat and National Hunt metrics, the latter contracting far more sharply.