© Photo Healy Racing
Limerick's Christmas festival is showing healthy signs at the halfway point, with crowd figures well ahead of their corresponding numbers from last year.
Racecourse Manager Conor O'Neill reported "today's crowd figure is 7,648 which is up from 4,071 in 2013 and 7,234 in 2012. It's amazing what good weather does and it's a fantastic figure.
"The publicity and advertising definitely had to help and having a race broadcast on RTE each day gives the meeting a national profile. RTE were very happy yesterday and also took an interview from Ambrose McCurtin (winning jockey in the feature race) which was also great."
The festival, which was heavily advertised, has now shown two days of growth following yesterday's increase of 200 to 9,105, despite bad weather. By comparison, Leopardstown's 2014 St Stephen's Day crowd figure was 2,000 down on 2013.
By Thomas Weekes
