Rural Ireland races to the front
RELIABLE as ever, rural Ireland delivered in tremendous fashion at the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival of horse racing over the jumps.
Cheltenham is the most valuable and prestigious fixture in jump racing, with prize-money of €4.2 million. Attendances totalling 223,748 saw amazing performances by Irish-bred and trained horses.
Irish trainers scooped a record-breaking 13 of the 27 races. Another record was 42 Irish-bred horses finishing in the first three, taking a 52% share of the win and place results — twice the achievement of the French-breds which compete with Ireland for jump racing supremacy.
The leading rider, trainer and owner were Irish — but many thousands throughout rural Ireland share in this massive boost for the Irish bloodstock industry, right down to the local volunteers in parishes who organise the point to point racing from which so many of our Cheltenham performers graduate.
Meanwhile, Irish-bred horses have been winning 23% of the races at the 2011 Dubai International Racing Carnival which began in January.
Here, they compete against the best British, French, German, South African, Brazilian, Argentinean and Australian bred horses. More than €18m of prize money is on offer at Dubai, culminating in next Sunday’s €7m Dubai World Cup.
After Cheltenham, Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney took the opportunity to congratulate all the Irish achievers, the 15 Irish-bred winners, 13 Irish-trained winners, and 22 Irish-ridden winners.
He said it became fashionable in Ireland for the media and policy makers to focus on the so-called more exciting elements of the Irish economy, such as the smart economy, IT and construction, where there was a quick buck to be made and new companies were coming to Ireland to set up. In many ways, the importance of agriculture, the agri-food sector, fisheries and fish processing to Ireland was not prioritised as it should have been through the boom years.
We now see agriculture and the agri-food sector as providing the good news story the economy needs at the moment, in terms of job creation and export growth, said the minister.
Within days, that good news story got even better, with Cheltenham results demonstrating the strength of the Irish bloodstock industry, according to Mr Coveney, proving that this country is a true leader in the equine world. Irish-trained horses came from many different counties, including Carlow, Kildare, Meath, Tipperary, Waterford and Wexford, demonstrating the enormous economic benefit of the bloodstock industry throughout the country, providing 16,000 jobs and exports worth some €150m to 36 countries in 2010.
Mr Coveney said apart from horseracing and breeding, we have natural advantages in other areas, including agriculture and the agri-food sectors, and we must exploit those advantages.
But the horseracing and breeding achievements are even more noteworthy because of the links of the industry to national prosperity, and the ruins left behind by the boom and bust cycle.
The number of registered thoroughbred foals has fallen 39% in three years, and many trainers have only one third to one quarter of the horses they had four years ago. Like all farmers, our bloodstock industry is used to good times and bad and will soldier on through the slump — given half a chance, and government support to back up Mr Coveney’s words of praise.
