Low expectations were matched by Champion crowd

THE attendance at last Saturday's Irish Champion Stakes at Leopardstown was 8,289 and that seems to have satisfied the management at the track and the people in authority in racing.

It was a perfectly acceptable crowd, of course, but you could hardly describe starting the meeting some two hours later than normal as a roaring success either, given that it was only up by 566 on the previous year.

The notion an attendance well below 10,000 at such a high-profile meeting is thought to be fine is simply because there are no great expectations anymore when it comes to flat racing in this country.