Leopardstown and Limerick crowds capped at 5,000
Tim Husbands: 'We are planning for a limited capacity because of the need for social distancing and the various Covid protocols.' Picture: Healy Racing
The post-Christmas racing festivals at Leopardstown and Limerick, two of the biggest meetings of the entire year, will go ahead as planned but with crowds capped at 5,000, it was announced Friday following a meeting of the National Public Health Emergency Team and government ministers.
With Nphet having expressed “exceptional concern” about the current impact of the Covid pandemic and particularly the virulence of the Omicron variant, it was inevitable that there would be a knock-on effect for social events.
In revealing the reason behind the new restrictions, Taoiseach Micheál Martin expressed his concern about the “hugely transmissible strain of the disease” and warned of the likelihood of seeing a spread of the infection “at a rate that is far in excess of anything we have seen to date.”
The new measures are part of a wide-scale clampdown on social contact over the traditionally busy Christmas period, but it is a move Leopardstown anticipated, if not to the extent announced on Friday.
Earlier this month, track management chose to cap attendance at 10,000 in order to facilitate the safe implementation of Covid protocols, but quickly reviewed that figure.
Speaking to the in early December, Leopardstown chief executive Tim Husbands said: “We are planning for a limited capacity because of the need for social distancing and the various Covid protocols. I'd like to think there will be no significant U-turn by government in the coming weeks and that's what we are preparing for at the moment.”
Within days of the statement, it became increasingly likely that further restrictions would apply and, understanding the fluidity of the situation and anticipating such measures, Husbands said that they would be “reviewing all of our capacities … to see just where we are, but it looks like we will be coming down from 10,000.”
On Friday evening, that decision was taken out of their hands.
Circumstances have changed quite markedly in the intervening period and, with the new variant of the coronavirus accounting for 35% of all cases of the virus, the Cabinet signed off on the new restrictions to effect “an immediate reduction in contacts between people in order to prevent Omicron overwhelming us”.
A maximum attendance of 20,000 over the four days at Leopardstown is a significant drop on the figure in excess of 57,000 which passed through the gates in 2019 when the meeting last went ahead without restriction. Over the same four days at Limerick racecourse, the attendance topped 40,000.
This is a further setback for the racing industry which, like much of the rest of the industries in the country, has toiled, at great expense, to keep going these past two years.
