The Bellewstown July Festival: The Complete Guide

The July Festival runs over three days. The opening cards lean on the Flat, and the meeting builds towards an all-jumps day that carries the feature. There is no graded race anywhere on the programme, so the pull of the week is prize money and depth of field rather than class.

QuinnBet Bellewstown Handicap Hurdle

The headline act is the feature handicap hurdle, run over about 2m1f40y. It was formerly the Crockafotha Handicap Hurdle, named for the hill the course sits on, and was sponsored by Bar One Racing across roughly 2021 to 2023 when it was worth about €45,000. It now runs as the QuinnBet Bellewstown Handicap Hurdle and has been promoted with a fund of around €60,000, which makes it comfortably the most valuable race of the Bellewstown season. General Manager Kevin Coleman described the 2025 renewal as by far the most valuable to date, crediting the QuinnBet sponsorship.

The race matters beyond the prize itself: the winner earns free entry to the Guinness Galway Hurdle, one of the highlights of the Galway Festival later in the summer, so the Bellewstown feature doubles as a stepping stone for a bigger target.

Feature-race conditions

Detail	QuinnBet Bellewstown Handicap Hurdle
Type	Handicap hurdle (no graded status)
Distance	about 2m1f40y
Prize fund	around €60,000 (recent renewals)
Former name	Crockafotha Handicap Hurdle
Bonus	free entry to the Guinness Galway Hurdle for the winner

The August feature: the Mullacurry Cup

Bellewstown's other named feature falls at the two-day August meeting rather than in July, but it is worth knowing as the season's second-biggest race. The Mullacurry Cup Handicap Hurdle takes its name from Mullacurry, a now-defunct racecourse in County Louth. It is a handicap hurdle run over about 2m4½f (2m4f110y). Prize money has been quoted variously, at around €25,000 in some recent renewals and lower in others, and it is not a graded race either.

The supporting card

Around the features, the July Festival mixes Flat handicaps and maidens with hurdle races. Early cards have included an Irish EBF median sires or auction maiden and the Indaver Ireland Handicap over five furlongs, along with the usual run of handicaps that make up a Bellewstown programme.

Summer racing at Bellewstown is very old. The first record appears in the August 1726 edition of the Dublin Gazette and the Weekly Courier, which means the meeting has a claim to being one of the oldest in Ireland. In 2026 the racecourse marked its 300th anniversary, counting from that 1726 first record, and staged a birthday celebration on the Hill in early July to go with the Festival.

The defining early moment came in 1780, when George Tandy, a former Mayor of Drogheda and brother of the patriot James Napper Tandy, secured royal sponsorship from King George III. The monarch's support brought His Majesty's Plate, valued at £100, a substantial prize at the time. Royal sponsorship of the plate is generally recorded as continuing until 1980, when it was discontinued after the British monarchy consolidated its Irish support on the Royal Whip at the Curragh.

By the mid-18th century Bellewstown had grown into a focal point of Irish racing, drawing large crowds and at one stage extending to five-day meetings. There was even a cricket ground in the middle of the track for a time. The modern shape of the season, with a three-day July Festival as its centrepiece, is a later development, but the July gathering as the year's high point is a long tradition of summer racing on the hill.

The July feature has changed its name and backer more than once. It ran for years as the Crockafotha Handicap Hurdle, after the hill, then carried Bar One Racing sponsorship around 2021 to 2023, and is now the QuinnBet Bellewstown Handicap Hurdle. The prize has climbed with the sponsorship to around €60,000, which is a large sum by Bellewstown standards and reflects the meeting's status as the flagship occasion rather than any change in grade.

The track has been tidied over the years too. The home bend was realigned from 2009 to allow safer, faster racing, but the essential character of the course, sharp, undulating and hilltop, has stayed the same.

Bellewstown's fame rests more on people and occasions than on champion horses, and its most memorable meeting has nothing to do with the July feature at all.

The Yellow Sam coup

The story that made the course famous is the Yellow Sam betting coup of 1975. It fell at a June meeting rather than the July Festival, in a modest amateur riders' handicap hurdle, but it is the single most retold Bellewstown moment and worth knowing before you visit. The professional gambler Barney Curley targeted the race because the track had almost no communications: effectively one public phone box linking it to the outside world. About 25 minutes before the off, Curley's accomplice Benny O'Hanlon occupied the box, pretending to talk to a dying relative, so off-course bookmakers could not get money back to the course to cut the price. Yellow Sam, trained by Liam Brennan and ridden by amateur Michael Furlong, won at 20/1. As nothing about it was illegal, the bookmakers had to pay out. A Racing Post feature put the profit at £306,000, "the equivalent of over £2 million today." Sources disagree on the exact date, giving either 25 or 26 June 1975. The course has embraced the tale, preserving the phone box and marking the coup's anniversaries.

Recent July features

On the racing side, the July feature handicap hurdle is where the meeting's more recent memories sit. Gordon Elliott is the outstanding jumps trainer at the track, and he took the 2025 renewal with Bowensonfire under Jack Kennedy, winning by four and a half lengths from 16 runners. The roll of honour below is given only as far as it can be verified.

Year	Winner	Trainer	Jockey	SP
2025	Bowensonfire (FR)	Gordon Elliott	Jack Kennedy	7/1
2024	Petrol Head	Miss Katy Brown	Danny Gilligan	7/4f
2023	Wouldn't You Agree (IRE)	Eoin Griffin	M. M. McDonagh	20/1
2022	Anna Bunina (FR)	John C. McConnell	Shane Fitzgerald	9/2f

The 2024 winner, Petrol Head, later returned a positive clenbuterol test but kept the race after the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board took no further action in October 2024.

The Mullacurry Cup roll of honour

The August meeting's Mullacurry Cup Handicap Hurdle has its own recent winners. These are listed by name only, without a returned price, as the prices are not confirmed here.

Year	Winner
2025	Birmingham Alabama
2024	Barry Lyndon
2023	Our Bobby
2022	Penny Jar
2021	Repeat That
2020	Important Message

Bellewstown's track shapes how the racing runs, and knowing the biases is useful context. None of it is a route to profit, and it is worth saying so plainly before anything else: backing favourites loses money to starting price over time, and no system of backing favourites, or trends-clean runners, should be assumed profitable here or anywhere.

With that stated, the course does have well-documented quirks. The sharp, undulating hilltop oval, with its cambers, tight turns and road crossings, puts a premium on a balanced, speedy, prominent-racing type. Ground is usually on the quicker side at the July fixture because the course sits on high ground, though it is well watered.

The draw and pace patterns below are factual observations about how the track has tended to play, not tips.

Factor	Observed tendency at Bellewstown
Draw over 5f	strong high-draw bias (the dogleg lets high numbers run a straighter line)
Draw over 1m	slight low-draw edge
Pace over 5f	strong front-runner and prominent-racing bias
Pace over middle trips	the pace edge weakens as the trip lengthens
Going in July	usually on the quick side, but watered

Over hurdles the picture is less clear-cut. The long, well-cambered straights make the jumps track fairer than the tight Flat course, and Bellewstown is not thought to breed course specialists over jumps in the way some tracks do. Prominent runners still tend to do well.

The feature July handicap hurdle is a competitive, well-backed race with a big field, which is exactly the sort of contest where prices are efficient and edges are thin. Treat any pattern above as background to reading a race, not a reason to expect a return.

If you do have a bet, set a budget you are happy to lose and stick to it. If it stops being fun, it is time to stop. Free help and advice are available at BeGambleAware.org.

The July Festival runs over three days in early July, and in 2026 it took place on 2, 3 and 4 July, followed by a Country Music Xtravaganza on Sunday 5 July to mark the 300th anniversary. Dates move year to year, so check the official calendar at bellewstownraces.ie before planning a trip. Racing at the summer meeting is traditionally staged on warm evenings.

Watching from home

All Irish racecourses have been on Racing TV since 2019, and Bellewstown's fixtures are broadcast there. The racecourse promotes live Racing TV coverage on its own site, so the July Festival cards are available to Racing TV subscribers.

Attending on the day

Bellewstown keeps its old-fashioned country-festival character. Facilities are marquee-based rather than built around a large permanent grandstand, and the meeting leans on a fairground, food and craft stalls, best-dressed competitions and live music after racing. Picnics on the hill are part of the tradition.

General admission has been around €15 for adults and about €8 for students and senior citizens, with accompanied children under 16 free. Annual membership has been about €50 for adults and €30 for students and seniors, which is worth it for anyone attending several of the meetings. There is no strict dress code, though best-dressed prizes are handed out on set days.

Getting there is easiest by road via the M1, exiting at Julianstown or Drogheda South and following the local Bellewstown signs. The course is about 11km south of Drogheda and roughly 35 to 37km from Dublin, with ample free parking on site. By public transport, take the train to Drogheda and then the complimentary courtesy shuttle from the Old Abbey car park, which departs about an hour before the first race.

For fuller detail on tickets, enclosures, travel and where to stay, see the Bellewstown Racecourse Complete Guide.