Thurles loss a sign of challenging times for racecourses

Late last week, the Molony family, custodians of Thurles Racecourse, dropped an unexpected bombshell on the Irish racing scene, announcing the immediate closure of the racecourse in Co Tipperary. There hasn't been a racecourse closure in Ireland since Tralee in 2007, which fell prey to developers.

The racecourse has been the only privately owned racecourse in Ireland, a proper family affair, since the late Pierce Molony took over from his father in 1974, the family having bought the property in the 1900s. Pierce's widow Riona has been at the helm since her husband's death in 2015, and released a statement on Friday.

Riona commented “It has been an honour and a privilege for our family to have run Thurles Racecourse, and I am officially announcing our retirement today. We are very proud of the immense contribution our family has made to racing and we are most grateful to our extended racecourse family, our dedicated staff, generous sponsors, loyal patrons and the wider racing community for all your support. Horse-racing is part of the fabric of our family, and we have been very fortunate to have made so many great friends within the industry over the years. My family and I look forward to going racing with you again, as spectators.” 

She continued, “Since my beloved husband Pierce passed away in 2015, with the help of our four daughters Patricia, Helen, Ann Marie and Kate and our wonderful staff, we’ve managed to keep the show on the road and I know he would be very proud of us for that. The girls all have their own families, careers and lives to live. Ever increasing industry demands and the cost of doing business has also been a major factor.” 

Thurles' predicament is one felt by independent racecourses across the world, struggling to meet the demands of compliance, a diminishing horse population and to keep pace with the expectations of an audience facing a bewildering choice of leisure options. Even among the larger racecourse groups in the UK and Ireland, they have faced their own challenges, centralizing resources in a bid to save costs and rationalize. French racecourse operators will know only too well that a strong volunteer cadre is at the heart of sustaining the wide variety of courses across provincial France - a not dissimilar story, whilst in Germany, just a single racecourse is in private hands.

The loss of Thurles will be keenly felt among the National Hunt community. This was an all-weather course in all but name, providing racing ground in midwinter when everywhere else was waterlogged or frozen.

But the surprise nature of the closure raises some questions of its own. Businesses in difficulty generally put out distress calls, and if they have been made, there appears to have been a deaf ear applied. Even if the land is not for sale, the longevity of the Molony association and their emotional, never mind financial, investment in it would make one think it might be possible to find a white knight to underpin its future success.

That no apparent effort to find an alternative to closure has been made, or made public at least, shows something of a disconnect between the authorities - both within and beyond racing - and the Molony family.

It's now clear that the so-called crock of gold that is racecourse media rights may be a mirage in the face of competing demands from racing's squabbling constituents to re-invest.

There are plenty of wealthy racing men in Ireland, and a governing body with a strong commercial portfolio of existing racecourses of its own. It must be hoped that the situation can be salved by a collective plan to save one of Irish racing's country jewels.

Without, sadly Thurles may prove the tip of an iceberg.