It was a cool seven degrees at Leopardstown on St Stephen’s Day and felt nearer freezing thanks to the stiff easterly breezes blowing across the track.
But you’d never have guessed this from the women’s fashions. Coats, faux fur and otherwise, rarely descended lower than mid-thigh. Skirts were even shorter. Hats were few and far between.
It seemed that many racegoers were relying for warmth only by that magical combination, well known for rendering its owners impermeable to the cold: fake tan and youth.
And it was a predominantly young, raucous crowd that descended on the South Dublin track for the first day of the Christmas festival.
Faced with age-vetting at the entrance, where the rule is that that under-18s are required to be accompanied by parents or guardians, a few were in need of temporary adoption.
“Would you mind pretending to … ?” a teenager asked a couple in the queue behind me. Undaunted by the shaking heads that cut him off mid-sentence, he said “no worries” and looked elsewhere for fostering.
Eva Cormack and Aine Quinn enjoying the first day of the Leopardstown festival on St Stephen’s Day. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/Inpho
The going at the course was officially “yielding” or “yielding-to-good in places”. Many punters, meanwhile, were soft, or soft-to-heavy in places, after the Christmas excess.
And when the PA announced that “Number 5 in the next race is carrying two pounds over-weight”, it sounded as if even the horses had been hitting the mince pies too hard as well.
In fact, the horse in question was blameless. It was the rider who couldn’t quite make his required weight for the handicap, a perennial problem in this least forgiving of sports. Some of the rest of us were just lucky we don’t have to face the weigh room on the day after Christmas.
The ups and downs of horse racing were dramatically illustrated by another jockey, Jack Kennedy, who won the first race in style on the heavily backed favourite Ballyfad before falling at the last fence in the second, when again in front.
His mount then, El Cairos, crumpled on landing and sent Kennedy crashing out through the rails, before joining him there. They both survived unhurt and the jockey went on to win two more races later.
Paralympian Ellen Keane at Leopardstown. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/Inpho Anne-Marie McManus at the Leopardstown festival. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/Inpho
A horse called Murat benefited form the mistake. So did James Murgatroyd from Castleknock, who had backed the eventual winner.
Not that he cheered the fall. “You never cheer a horse falling,” confirmed his friend Cian Sheerin. Their ethics paid off in the third race when they both had the winning favourite, Narciso Has.
Spare a thought however for Lexi Smyth, a fresh-faced 19-year-old from Rathfarnham who, not being used to this sort of thing, was reduced to asking The Irish Times where she could bet on Spinola Bay in the fourth race.
Grace O’Connor from Wexford at Leopardstown on Friday. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/Inpho
She was in the betting ring at the time, surrounded by bookmakers, but we had to break it to her gently that it was too late to bet now because the race had already started.
“Did someone give you a tip?” I asked. “Yes – my mother,” she said: “I’m supposed to put €20 on it.” We winced on her behalf: “Well you better hope it doesn’t win now.”
It had already been an exciting week for Lexi because on Christmas Eve, at midnight mass in Rathfarnham, she had the honour of placing the Baby Jesus in the crib.
The event was even televised, because the church is celebrating its 150th anniversary: “It was on RTÉ and Eurovision – the TV station, not the song contest.”
This should have been good form going into Leopardstown. Alas, perhaps in disapproval of betting, God was not on her side there. Spinola Bay did indeed win, romping home under a recovered Jack Kennedy. But on the plus side, if Lexi’s mother reads this, at least she has an alibi.
