Trainers call for more meetings at Dundalk after one race attracts 128 entries

Not enough divides. Not enough races. Not enough meetings. That is the message from trainers to Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) after 128 horses were entered for one race at Dundalk on Friday night.

The BetVictor-sponsored 7f handicap (7.45) is for runners rated between 45 and 65. Adrian McGuinness, Andrew Slattery and Damian English, who are responsible for 13 of the 128 entries, are pleading with HRI to facilitate low-grade horses or risk losing them to Britain.

McGuinness has sent out 65 Dundalk winners since Ireland's only all-weather venue opened and says huge entries for low-grade handicaps is a recurring issue the authorities are doing little about.

The trainer said: "We run into this problem year-in year-out for these low-grade handicappers. They haven't done a whole lot about it, that's the problem. It's hugely frustrating for everyone, including the owners of these horses who have no idea whether they will get a run or not from one week to the next.

"We have written to HRI and proposed that these low-grade handicaps be split into two categories of 0-55 and 55-65. We feel this might help to ease the problem.

"My suggestion would be to have a six-race card and divide two races or else have three divisions of the one race. We have to try and solve the problem rather than ignore it. We need more races, we need more divides and we need more Dundalks, it's as simple as that.

"We need to solve these problems or people will run away. I don't want to have to go to Wolverhampton to run my horses, I want to say at home and run them."

Dundalk in numbers

294 horses entered at Dundalk on Friday night
128 horses entered for the 45-65 handicap
104 horses ran at the venue last Friday night
37 fixtures at Dundalk in 2019
9 entries in Friday's 45-65 handicap from Denis Hogan's stable

Slattery, who has six horses entered in the 7f handicap on Friday night, had been aiming Eacharn at the event for the last month but that plan has backfired due to the massive number of entries.

"I had planned this race for Eacharn for more than a month. My son Andrew is going for the apprentice title and I was lining this fella up for him. He goes well fresh and we have given him a nice break so the plan was to come here all guns blazing but he is number 66 on the list so he has no hope of getting in. It's deeply frustrating. We need more races for these horses," Slattery said.

English believes just because a horse is running in the 0-65 bracket it does not automatically mean they are bad horses.

"Horses in the 0-65 bracket are very hard to plan for because of the current situation. If you have owners in Britain it's difficult to organise things like booking flights. Horses in the lower categories aren't simply bad horses," English said.

Jason Morris, director of racing at HRI, says he understands the frustration of trainers but is not able to put on additional fixtures at Dundalk for financial reasons.

Morris said: "We have scheduled two extra meetings in the coming weeks and the card next Tuesday at the Curragh is targeted at these lower-grade horses. Five of the eight weeks after the turf season ends will have two Dundalk meetings a week, historically it would have only been one. We are not in a position to have additional cards beyond that for financial reasons.

"In 2007, more than 24,500 horses were balloted out at Dundalk, which was an average of more than 10 per race. This year so far, just over 4,000 horses have been balloted out, which is less than two per race. We have tried to adapt the fixture list and the race programmes to cope with the demands of the increase in horse population."

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