“We were in Listowel recently to cover the annual Listowel Races for the 9th year in-a-row on TG4. The north Kerry town is always a bustling hive of activity for the Harvest Festival and this year was no different. We started our broadcast from the Monday through the week until the final ‘Slán Abhaile’ Race on the Saturday evening. During the week there is racing on 7 straight days, there was 53 races that took place and a crowd of over 90,000 attended the venue!
Monday and Tuesday are traditionally quiet days but the crowds came out in force again on the Wednesday for the big race of the week, The Guinness Kerry National which was won this year by ‘White Star Line’ in the 5:10pm. We did an interview with Leo Powell from the Racing Post aswell as an interview with Andrew McNamara who was there promoting a charity day of racing for his injured cousin JT McNamara and also fellow jockey JonJo Bright that will take place at Limerick Racecourse on the 14th of October.
Thursday was another big day and we had an interview with Brian Kavanagh from Horse Racing Ireland and also the ‘Best Dressed Man Competition’, which the ‘Kerry Rose’ Gemma Kavanagh helped to judge. We also did a feature with local Milliner Aoife Hannon and Mary O’Flaherty of Chic Boutique to preview Friday’s Ladies Day. The big race of the day was The Ladbrokes Handicap Hurdle which was won by No.3 Fiery Oscar in the 5:05pm race.
Friday was Ladies Day, Lá na mBan, and the style was mighty at the Listowel racecourse where all the bright and the beautiful were in attendance. The weather smiled for the first part of the day and it was down to Daithí Ó Sé and Celia Holman Lee as judges of Ladies Day to select the ‘Best Dressed Lady’. After much deliberation they selected local woman Nollaig McCarthy as this year’s winner. We also had an interview with jockeys Davy Russell and Kevin Manning to preview the upcoming return of the highly successful and IFTA winning ‘Jockey Eile’ series. Away from the fashion and in front of a massive crowd, the big race of the day was won by Rich Coast, ridden by J.P. Murtagh in the Guinness Handicap at 4:40pm.
Saturday is our final day and by the end of the day’s racing we had a nice cheque of €1,140 to present to The Kerry Hospice from all of our successes from our charity bets from during the week thanks to Boyle Sports.
We’re looking to next year already!