THE second Dublin Racing Festival can be considered to be a success, if not quite as much as the first. Due to unseasonably dry weather, which might have suited the onlookers but which turned the surface “good” on the hurdles track and “good to firm” on the chase one by my reckoning, there were numerous withdrawals this time.

It remains to be seen how much the form will hold up at Cheltenham, where the aim is for “good to soft” or softer, at least at the beginning of the four-day meeting.