CURRAGH CEO Derek McGrath has announced that the in-field of the course will be used for Irish St Leger day, the second part of Irish Champions Weekend.

The “Family Friendly Enclosure” could allow for another 1,000 people on top of the 6,000 attendance cap which was put in place for Irish Derby Day.

“We have a number of weekends behind us now and that is helping us to understand what our customer needs,” McGrath said.

“We’ve been looking at opening the in-field for a while but we didn’t want to make a call on it until we were further down the track.

“Now that we have the information from the previous meetings, we’ve decided to go ahead with it.

WALK OVER

“There won’t be a separate ticket for the in-field as such, but the option is there for racegoers to walk over in between races.”

The Curragh has come under fire from leading figures in the industry for deciding to race on while reconstruction works went on for the €70 million development.

Irish St Leger day is viewed alongside Irish Derby Day as the most popular cards on the Curragh fixture list with three Group 1’s on the day. A total of 9,225 attended the meeting last year.