Punchestown announces Festival prize money increases

Total prize money for this year's Punchestown Festival has been increased to more than €2.9million. Feature races on the first four days of the Festival will now be worth €250,000, while the minimum value for any race has been raised from €12,000 to €15,000. "These significant increases in prize money are a continuation of our policy to align the Festival prize fund with that of the major National Hunt meetings in Great Britain in order to attract the best of British and Irish horses to Punchestown," said Punchestown manager Richie Galway."The key Grade One races remain a priority and hence the €50,000 increase to the four feature events, but we are also very conscious that all owners should benefit from enhanced prize money and similar to our improvements in recent years, we remain very much focused on addressing the values of the overall programme."