Seven steps that could make the Dublin Racing Festival even better

So, how was it for you? The big one. The biggest two days of jump racing in Ireland. So big €1.8 million in prize-money was put up. So big ITV wanted a piece of the action. So big Ruby Walsh said Leopardstown would have to "fill the place" when Ireland’s newest festival was launched in September 2017.

Filling the place is 36,000. Leopardstown welcomed 24,256 for the second edition of the Dublin Racing Festival. The concept is so good and has so much potential that the crowd, down 1,880 from 2018, really bothered me.

Attendances are not the be all and end all and, as Pat Keogh [Leopardstown chief executive] said in this paper last week, they are a risky short-term barometer, but there is something wrong when the final of the Coursing Derby at Clonmel can draw almost as big a crowd as the biggest day of National Hunt racing in Ireland, the only day on the calendar with four Grade 1s.