Leopardstown fully expecting Dublin Racing Festival to go ahead as planned
By Racing TV
Last Updated: Tue 27 Jan 2026
Storm Chandra appears to have found a worthy adversary in the shape of Leopardstown, where new CEO Mark Clayton is confident the course will be staging the highly-anticipated Dublin Racing Festival as scheduled on Saturday and Sunday.
Formally an executive director at Southwell where he was part of the team that brought City Of Troy to Nottinghamshire prior to the Breeders’ Cup, Clayton is now tasked with overseeing the invasion of British racing fans set to descend on the Foxrock venue, where ticket sales are expected to reach 35,000.
A prolonged period of wet weather in the Irish capital, including an unexpected 60mm of rain on Monday, left Leopardstown unraceable in on Tuesday. However, Englishman Clayton said he had “complete optimism” the weekend’s action will not be hindered by the untimely appearance of the storm that has seen some areas of Ireland flooded.
“The storm is pretty much blowing through now and we’re confident given the forecast we will be racing both days, which is amazing given the volume of rain and I’m not sure is many tracks in Britain or Ireland that would be able to take that,” he said.
“I joked with the team when I first met them that I had been to the track numerous times over the last year and not seen any rain, well the last 12 days we’ve seen 160mm of rain and on Monday we had 60mm of rain, it’s been torrential.
“Of course we have to remain cautious, but we have no contingencies planned as given the forecast at the moment, it gives us complete optimism we will be racing both Saturday and Sunday.”
He added: “The reason we’re in this position is because of the unforecast rain we had yesterday. We were forecast to have 45mm over Monday and Tuesday, and yesterday alone we got 60mm. That is why when we walked it yesterday we were in a good state, but today is unraceable.”
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