THE seven-day Listowel Festival starts on Sunday. Total prize money for the week is €1.34 million. The highlight of the week is Wednesday’s €200,000 Guinness Kerry National Handicap Chase and the weights for this three-mile contest were published earlier this week (see page 60).

Shantou Village is all set for a second tilt at the race. Neil Mulholland’s charge has eight career victories to his credit – including wins over hurdles and fences at Cheltenham.

The nine-year-old was beaten five and a half lengths into fifth place behind the Noel Meade-trained Snow Falcon in last year’s Kerry National and his trainer has been eyeing a repeat bid for some time.

Mulholland said on Monday: “He did a nice bit of work this morning and we’re very happy him, so the plan is to take him back to Listowel. He was only beaten just over five lengths in the race last year when the ground was pretty soft. Hopefully we’ll get better ground this year as that would suit him well.”

Shantou Village has not been seen in competitive action since being pulled up in the Ultima Handicap Chase at the Cheltenham Festival in March, but Mulholland is confident the lack of a recent run will not be an issue.

“He’d been running during the summer last year, but he won his bumper first time out and his novice hurdle first time out and we just said we’d take him fresh this year and see how we get on,” the Somerset handler added. “He’s got a nice racing weight (9st 13lb) at the moment and we’re looking forward to having a go.”

Shantou Village is one of three British-trained contenders for the feature event of the Harvest Festival along with last year’s fourth Dell’ Arca – trained by David Pipe – and Martin Todhunter’s Monbeg River.

The last British-trained winner of the race was in 2000 when it was won by Macs Supreme, trained by the late Ferdy Murphy.

The weights are headed by Enda Bolger’s Ballyoisin, who made an impressive return from an eight-month absence at Killarney in August. Bolger is also responsible for the ante-post favourite Movewiththetimes.

Willie Mullins has five entries in Yorkhill, Some Neck, Pravalaguna, Minella Beau and Ask Susan, while Gordon Elliott’s nine-strong team includes A Toi Phil, Barra, Three Musketeers and Ravenhill. Other contenders include Joseph O’Brien’s All The Answers and Eric McNamara’s trio of Internal Transfer, Black Scorpion and Gwencily Berbas.

Win a car for a year

SUNDAY at Listowel is Kerry Group Family Day and next Friday is the McElligotts Honda Ladies Day. The Listowel Tidy Towns/An Taisce sustainable focused fashion competition is on Saturday.

On Friday Marietta Doran and Celia Holman Lee will choose the overall McElligotts Honda Best Dressed Lady and she will win a Honda Civic for a year and €3,000 in cash. There will also be cash prizes for ‘jazziest headpiece’ and ‘most stylish selfie’.

Saturday sees the seventh staging of the sustainable focused fashion competition which encourages racegoers to wear vintage and to restyle and upcycle their wardrobes so as to reduce waste and be kinder to the environment. It will be judged by model Pat Walker and Rachel Geary from An Taisce.

Making a welcome return on Ladies Day is the double decker open top bus which will transfer racegoers from the town square to the racecourse, every half-hour from noon. This free service has music on-board plus complimentary prosecco and a chance to win prizes.

The Guinness Kerry National on Wednesday usually attracts a crowd of 25,000 \ Healy Racing

Get social and win €300

RACEGOERS at next week’s Festival are being encouraged to post photos of themselves having a great time on Facebook and Instagram. If they use the #listowelraces hashtag, they could win a €300 prize. The racecourse advises racegoers that the image and caption “should show the feeling of beng at the races in Listowel.”

Come and watch Kerry stop the Dubs!

WITH all the talk this week of how Leopardstown will be affected by the All-Ireland football final replay, some may have forgotten that Listowel are also racing next Saturday.

Racecourse manager Brenda Daly reported: “It is incredibly unfortunate that both counties involved are staging racemeetings on the day, but we will just have to grin and bear it.”

Listowel’s Saturday card starts at 1.45pm and the final race is off at 5.40pm, which is 20 minutes before the ball is thrown in at Croke Park.

The match will be shown in all the bars and restaurants throughout the racecourse.

There are three big screens located around the track for the racing and two slightly smaller screens – one near the parade ring and one at the town end of the enclosure.

Japan (nearest camera) won his maiden at Listowel last year before going on to Group 1 glory \ Healy Racing

Ticket prices

ADMISSION is €25 on Wednesday and Friday, and €20 on all other days. Pensioners and students are asked to pay €12 for the first three days of the week, and €15 otherwise. Children under 12 have free admission if accompanied by an adult. Discounts are available online.

There will be free entertainment at the track every day, plus a racecard draw. Improvements made since last year include the installation of 58 new stable doors, plus new toilet and shower facilities for grooms.