The word “Curragh” means place of the running horse. The historic Curragh Racecourse is the home of Flat racing in Ireland and the venue for all five Irish Classic races and the second day of Longines Irish Champions Weekend. The Dubai Duty Free Irish Derby, which takes place at the height of summer, is the richest race in the Irish racing calendar.
Located just off the M7, the main Dublin/Cork road, in the heart of County Kildare, the Curragh racecourse has a busy schedule of race meetings between March and October every year. The big early season event is the Tattersalls Irish Guineas Festival in May followed by the Summer highlights of the Dubai Duty Free Irish Derby Festival and Juddmonte Irish Oaks weekend.
The Curragh Racecourse is also home to the Curragh Training ground which has seen many stars of the track including Sea The Stars, Vintage Crop, Hardy Eustace and Sinndar. The Curragh Training Grounds provide trainers with the opportunity to prepare their horses on approximately 1,500 acres of world-class training facilities. The standard and range of gallops on offer is really quite remarkable and led to Dermot Weld describing the facilities as “unquestionably one of the finest training grounds in the world”.
