MONDAY will see a new first for Irish racing in its current guise, the return of National Hunt action. Between then and the following Monday four of Ireland’s 26 racecourses will host jumping action, starting with Limerick. This week I caught up with the managers of the tracks in question.

Patrick O’Callaghan has had the advantage among the quartet of having staged a meeting behind closed doors prior to lockdown, and this week he held a flat meeting. He said: “We are aiming to provide good jumping ground, which is slower that the good ground we had for Wednesday’s flat card. We have been watering this week and will see what the forecast is before doing more at the weekend. There is a good sup of rain forecast but that could change. We’ll take it day-by-day.

“It’s an all hurdles and bumper card. Trying to maintain a chase track as well at this time of year can be challenging. It would require a whole circuit of extra ground, double the amount of work and watering, just for two races. There’s only so many hours in the day and this meeting is coming up quickly after our flat fixture.

“This will be the first jumps fixture in Ireland since March 24th and you’d expect at least one of the races will divide.”

Roscommon on Wednesday evening is next, and manager Michael Finneran has already staged a flat fixture since the resumption. He is hopeful all goes as well as it did for his first meeting behind closed doors. “It is great to have racing back on board in both flat and National Hunt, as it is the shop window for everybody involved in the racing industry. We have the hurdles and steeplechases ready for action. As in both forms of racing, I hope that both jockeys and horses return safely,” he said.

While having racing back is great, it is not without a cost and quite a deal of preparation. “We had to follow the guidelines set out by the HSE and the Government. We had a visit by officials of the IHRB and HRI prior to our first meeting to guide us through the requirements. This was a great benefit to us.”

Pleased that all went well for their first outing, Michael admits to “my stress levels dropping down a bit”, while he is anxious for racing to be able to open its gates to the public which will help to get sponsors on board.

Next Friday Andrew Hogan’s Tipperary, who raced on the level last night, welcomes the jumping fraternity. He said: “I am really looking forward to getting back to racing and we are delighted to be able to reschedule our lost fixtures. Preparing for a return to National Hunt racing has not really created any problems, except for a little extra water need. We’re very lucky to have a great team to look after that.”

Andrew is delighted to have retained a lot of his sponsors and says, “We are extremely grateful for their support. We have great racing to look forward to and we can’t wait to open our doors to our loyal supporters when it is safe to do so.”

Paddy Dunican is unique among the four managers as his meeting on Monday week will be his first of the year, and behind closed doors. He cannot wait to get back to action. “We are delighted to be back racing at Kilbeggan, with all our personnel now focused and working very hard preparing the racecourse for our first race meeting of the season on Monday, June 29th. We are also very pleased that HRI has rescheduled the race meetings that we lost.

“The prolonged period of dry weather, with very little rain, presents a huge challenge for us to prepare the track for jump racing. We are watering at the moment and hopefully the heavy rain that is forecast will come. This would be a huge help to soften the ground.

“Racing behind closed doors, without the public, will be a very strange experience. Sadly with Covid-19, we may have to adjust to this new way of racing for the foreseeable future. We are very fortunate that many of our sponsors are going to continue to support us even with no public attending.

“This is going to be a very challenging year, in which all of us are going to have to work together. I hope that in 2021 Covid-19 will be behind us and we will be back building the racing industry, with huge crowds coming to watch great horse racing at our racecourses.”