THOSE four-year-olds will have a total of 75 opportunities to run before the season draws to a close at Ballingarry over the June bank holiday weekend, including the four recently announced new auction maidens which begin at Kirkistown in March.

Overall, there are four fewer races for four-year-olds programmed, down from the 79 in 2018.

There are also small reductions in the number of open lightweight races and older maidens.

The drop in the latter is partly due to the loss of a handful of fixtures, while these races at Ballyarthur and Inch have both been replaced by winners races.

A total of 55 open lightweights feature in the spring provisional summary, which is seven fewer than the 62 of 2018.

Three fixtures this year, Dungarvan, Lemonfield and the April fixture at Stradbally, will all stage a mares’ open in favour of an open lightweight, which has contributed to that reduction.

It has also led to an increased number of nine mares’ opens featuring in the provisional summary, and the connections of these horses will be pleased to see that the additional races ensure that at least one mares’ open is due to take place in each month of the spring campaign.

Disappointingly, Kinsale and Ballingarry once again are each due to stage a mares’ open on consecutive days over the final weekend of the season.

Last year, both races produced just four runners each, and it is unlikely to increase significantly this year.

Connections would understandably have hoped that an alternative course could have been found to run one of them in the preceding weeks.

NOTABLE FEATURE

Following on the same lines, one of the notable features of the autumn race programme was the number of open lightweight races which were switched to novice rider races.

That has continued to a degree into the spring, with additions to the programme for that race category at the beginning and end of the spring season.

The recent Dromahane and Templencarriga fixtures added open races for novice riders, and they will be joined by Oldtown in February, Castletown-Geoghegan and Bellurgan Park in April and Tralee in May.

Given the frequency of these races in the autumn, there is now a significant hole in that programme over a large chunk of the spring campaign.

A more even spread of these races throughout the whole season would surely have been logical.

This would appease both those in favour of adding more opportunities for new riders to get chances aboard experienced horses.

The move would also satisfy those who may feel they are limited in the opportunities to run horses who are seeking hunter chase qualification and would prefer to use experienced riders that would be likely to remain aboard for targets later in the spring.