The History of Leopardstown

Leopardstown owes its existence to a man who knew a bargain when he saw one. Captain George Quin was a bookkeeper for the Irish Turf Club, and in the 1880s he spotted around 200 acres of cheap land in Foxrock going for very little during an economic slump. He bought it, set up the Leopardstown Racecourse Company, and laid out a racecourse on it.

A deliberate copy of an English course

Quin did not design the track from a blank sheet. He modelled it directly on Sandown Park in Surrey, the English course that had pioneered the enclosed, grandstand-led "park" raceday a few years earlier. Leopardstown shares many of Sandown's features, with one obvious difference that anyone who has backed a horse at both will know: Sandown is right-handed, while Leopardstown runs left-handed. The idea was the same, though. This was to be a modern, ticketed, comfortable raceday for a Dublin audience, not a rough open meeting.

A fast and successful opening

The build moved quickly. According to britishracecourses.org, "within six months of that starting, Leopardstown was inaugurated, with more than 5,000 reportedly attending the successful grand opening." The course was completed in 1888, and the crowd that turned up for that first day showed there was real appetite for racing on Dublin's southern edge. Leopardstown was, and remains, the only racecourse in the Irish capital.

What Quin actually built

The shape Quin laid down is essentially the shape that survives. A wide, left-handed, broadly oval galloping track of about a mile and three-quarters, with a run-in of three furlongs that rises gently from the final bend to the post. It is, as later form guides would point out, a stiffer track than it looks: the climb up the straight is long and gradual rather than dramatic, but it is a genuine stamina test, and the pace tends to lift a long way from home. That character, a place where strong stayers come into their own and hard-luck stories are rare, was built into the ground from the start.

One claim from the founding era should be treated with care. A secondary guide describes Leopardstown as the first British or Irish track to stage Sunday racing, but that has not been confirmed against a primary historical source, so it is best left as folklore rather than fact. What is solid is the rest: cheap Foxrock land, a Sandown blueprint, an 1888 opening, and 5,000 people through the gates on day one.

For its first half-century Leopardstown was a steady, well-run Dublin fixture rather than the international stage it later became. The big change in control came when management passed to Fred and Harold Clarke in the early 1900s, and it was under the Clarkes that the course settled into the pattern that defines it to this day: it began staging both Flat racing and jumps racing, rather than committing to one code. That decision, more than anything, set Leopardstown apart from tracks that picked a single discipline.

Wartime on the racecourse

The early decades were not entirely quiet. In 1941, during the Second World War, an RAF pilot named Hugh Verity force-landed his aircraft on the racecourse. Verity was briefly interned, this being neutral Ireland, before escaping back to England. It is one of those odd footnotes that a long-lived sporting venue accumulates, a reminder that the track was a real place in a real landscape, not a sealed sporting bubble.

The races that gave the meeting its prestige

The Clarke era also saw Leopardstown start to build the race programme that would carry its reputation. In 1950 the course ran the inaugural Irish Champion Hurdle, and the result could hardly have been better for the venue's standing: it was won by Hatton's Grace, trained by Vincent O'Brien, one of the defining names in the history of Irish racing. From its very first running, the Irish Champion Hurdle had a marquee winner and a marquee trainer attached to it.

The jumps story deepened a few years later. In 1956 the course first ran the novice chase now known as the Arkle Novice Chase, then called the Milltown Novice Chase. In 1963 the race was won by Arkle himself, the horse it would later be renamed for and one of the greatest chasers ever to race. A track that could put Hatton's Grace and Arkle on its honours board in the space of a single decade was no longer a provincial afterthought.

The threat that nearly ended it

By the 1960s the Clarkes faced a problem that had nothing to do with racing. Dublin was expanding south, and the family feared that urban encroachment would eventually swallow the Foxrock land. Rather than watch the course be sold off for housing piece by piece, in 1967 they sold the whole site to the Horse Racing Board of Ireland, reportedly for £300,000, specifically to preserve it for racing. It was the most important transaction in the track's history, and it set up everything that followed.

The 1967 sale to the Horse Racing Board of Ireland was a rescue, but it was also an investment. The new owners did not simply protect the land; they rebuilt the track. They re-laid, re-drained and widened the course and put up a new stand. The drainage work matters more than it sounds, because Leopardstown's good natural drainage and modern watering, refined from this era onward, are why the track rarely produces the extremes of going that plague some courses. That reliability of ground is one reason the best horses keep coming back.

Building the Flat programme

With the course secure, the race programme grew fast. In 1971 the track created the Leopardstown Derby Trial, originally run as the Nijinsky Stakes, and the Irish Sweeps Hurdle transferred in from Fairyhouse. The single most significant Flat addition came in 1976, when Leopardstown first ran the race that is now the Irish Champion Stakes. It started life as the Joe McGrath Memorial Stakes, named for Joe McGrath, the founder of the Irish Hospitals' Sweepstake.

The Champion Stakes then took a detour. From 1984 to 1990 it was run at Phoenix Park as the Phoenix Champion Stakes. When Phoenix Park closed after 1990, several of its key races came to Leopardstown, and the Champion Stakes returned in 1991 under its present name. It has been the centrepiece of the track's Flat calendar ever since, and a Group 1 contested by some of the best middle-distance horses in the world.

Building the jumps programme

The jumps side grew in parallel. In 1987 the course first ran the Irish Gold Cup, originally the Vincent O'Brien Irish Gold Cup, giving the winter calendar a staying chase of real weight to sit alongside the Irish Champion Hurdle. The Christmas Festival's premier chase took its modern form in 1992, when the present three-mile race, then the Ericsson Chase, replaced an earlier shorter contest. That race is now the Savills Chase.

The two festivals come into focus

Two later moves locked in the modern shape. In 2014 Leopardstown took on the Saturday of Irish Champions Weekend, later renamed the Irish Champions Festival, with the Curragh hosting the Sunday. Then in 2018 the course launched the Dublin Racing Festival, combining the previously separate Irish Champion Hurdle and Irish Gold Cup cards into a single two-day meeting carrying eight Grade 1 races and over two million euro in prize money.

By the end of this period the dual-code identity was complete: top-class Flat in September, the best of Irish jumps over Christmas and at the end of January, and a track that could plausibly claim to be Ireland's premier dual-purpose venue.

A track is remembered through its horses, and Leopardstown's roll call spans both codes. Some came once and produced something unforgettable; others came back year after year and made the place their own.

Sea The Stars (Flat)

If you want one race to sum up the level Leopardstown can reach, take the 2009 Irish Champion Stakes. Sea The Stars, trained by John Oxx and ridden by Michael Kinane, won it as part of an unbeaten campaign that read 2000 Guineas, Derby, Eclipse, Juddmonte International, Irish Champion and Arc, six Group 1s in a single season at three. He had already won a maiden at Leopardstown in August 2008, so the track saw both the apprentice and the master. He is rated among the greatest middle-distance horses of all time, and the Irish Champion was one of his crowning days.

Istabraq and Hurricane Fly (jumps)

Over hurdles, two horses defined eras here. Istabraq, trained by Aidan O'Brien and ridden by Charlie Swan, won the Irish Champion Hurdle three times from 1998 and added four December Festival Hurdles, the dominant hurdler of his time. Then came Hurricane Fly, trained by Willie Mullins and ridden by Ruby Walsh, who took the Irish Champion Hurdle five times between 2011 and 2015 and the December Hurdle four times. He is reported to have won ten times in all at Leopardstown.

Galopin Des Champs and the staying chasers

The modern jumps star is Galopin Des Champs, trained by Willie Mullins and ridden by Paul Townend. He won the Irish Gold Cup three years running from 2023 to 2025, the Savills Chase in 2023 and 2024, and the Dr P.J. Moriarty Novice Chase in 2022, all on top of two Cheltenham Gold Cups. Even the greats are mortal at Leopardstown, though: his bid for a record-equalling fourth Irish Gold Cup failed in 2026, when he finished third behind stablemate Fact To File, and his attempt at a third straight Savills Chase ended in third behind 7/1 Affordale Fury in 2025.

He chases a record set by Florida Pearl, also a Mullins horse, who won the Irish Gold Cup four times between 1999 and 2004, the last of them as a 12-year-old.

More of the honours board

• Honeysuckle (Henry de Bromhead, Rachael Blackmore): three Irish Champion Hurdles, 2020 to 2022.
• State Man (Willie Mullins, Paul Townend): three Irish Champion Hurdles, 2023 to 2025, plus two December Hurdles.
• Arkle: winner of the 1963 Milltown Novice Chase, now the Arkle Novice Chase, and a Leopardstown Hall of Fame member.
• Famous Name (Dermot Weld): holds the course record for most wins with 13 victories, every one at odds of 11/10 or shorter.

On the Flat, the Irish Champion Stakes alone has been won by Giant's Causeway, Dylan Thomas (twice, 2006 and 2007), Magical (twice, 2019 and 2020), High Chaparral, Daylami, Fantastic Light, Golden Horn, Roaring Lion and Auguste Rodin. The Leopardstown Hall of Fame also honours Dawn Run, Levmoss and Nijinsky. Two codes, one honours board, and very little of it ordinary.

Behind the horses stand the trainers, jockeys, owners and administrators who shaped Leopardstown across both codes. The names recur, generation to generation, which is part of what gives the place its continuity.

The trainers who built the legend

Vincent O'Brien is woven into the track's early prestige: he trained Hatton's Grace to win the first Irish Champion Hurdle in 1950, and the Irish Gold Cup was originally named in his honour. He is a Hall of Fame member. Tom Dreaper, the great chase trainer behind Arkle, is another, and his grip on the place was almost comic at one point: he won the Leopardstown Handicap Chase seven years in a row, from 1962 to 1968.

The modern era belongs to two men above all. Willie Mullins is the dominant jumps trainer the track has known, with a record nine Irish Champion Hurdles between 2011 and 2025, a record tally of Arkle wins, 11 December Hurdles across four horses, and multiple Irish Gold Cups and Savills Chases. In 2024 he won all eight Dublin Racing Festival Grade 1s; in 2025 he took six of the eight. On the Flat, Aidan O'Brien is the most successful Irish Champion Stakes trainer with 13 wins and carries the best 10-year strike rate at the track, around 19.4 per cent. Dermot Weld sits just behind on the Flat, the man who trained Famous Name to his 13 course wins and Tahiyra to the 2023 Matron Stakes. Gordon Elliott and Henry de Bromhead complete the modern jumps picture, the latter the trainer of Honeysuckle's three Irish Champion Hurdles.

The jockeys

In the saddle, Michael Kinane holds the Irish Champion Stakes record with seven wins, from Carroll House in 1989 to Sea The Stars in 2009. Over jumps, Ruby Walsh matched that with seven Irish Champion Hurdles between 2006 and 2016, four of them on Hurricane Fly, and rode at around a 28 per cent strike rate over the decade. Charlie Swan won five Irish Champion Hurdles, four on Istabraq. Among current riders, Paul Townend is the most successful active jumps jockey at the track, with more than 55 course wins, while Jack Kennedy has the best recent record. On the Flat, Ryan Moore strikes at around 28.9 per cent, and Rachael Blackmore is tied to Honeysuckle, A Plus Tard and Notebook. Pat Eddery and jockey Pat Taaffe, Arkle's partner, are Hall of Fame members.

Owners and administrators

The owners read like a who's who of the sport: the Coolmore partnership of Derrick Smith, Mrs John Magnier and Michael Tabor via Ballydoyle, JP McManus, Gigginstown House Stud, the Aga Khan Studs, Marie Donnelly (State Man) and Audrey Turley (Galopin Des Champs). And the people who run the place matter too: Brian Kavanagh as former HRI chief executive and Pat Keogh as Leopardstown chief executive oversaw the modern course through its biggest physical changes, with Mark Clayton the current Leopardstown chief executive.

The Leopardstown of today is a track that decided to invest heavily in itself rather than coast on its history, and the result is a venue rebuilt in stages across the 2010s.

The redevelopment

The work came in phases. Phase 1, a roughly three-million-euro project, landed in 2013. Phase 2 followed in 2015, a hospitality makeover on Grandstand Level 2 with an enlarged Champions Bar at ground level, finished in time for that year's Christmas Festival. The headline phase came in 2016 and 2017: a 12-million-euro project sitting within an overall 20-million-euro redevelopment, supported by a 4.7-million-euro HRI Capital Development grant. It delivered a new restaurant, new bars, new betting and entertainment areas, a new saddling area, a new weigh-room and administration building, and a second entrance, with the old Ballyogan entrance gates demolished. HRI chief executive Brian Kavanagh and Leopardstown chief executive Pat Keogh oversaw the works.

The aim, according to The Irish Times, was to host up to around 20,000 people comfortably on a given day, an increase of roughly 2,000 on the previous figure. The course had drawn around 20,000 on Champion Stakes day as far back as 2001, and across the whole of 2015 it welcomed about 167,000 visitors.

The three festivals today

The rebuilt course now anchors three big meetings, the structure the modern era is built around.

Festival	When	Headline
Christmas Festival	26 to 29 December	Seven Grade 1 jumps races, including the Savills Chase and Matheson Hurdle
Dublin Racing Festival	Late January / early February	Eight Grade 1s, including the Irish Gold Cup and Irish Champion Hurdle
Irish Champions Festival	September, Day 1	Irish Champion Stakes and Matron Stakes on the Flat

The Christmas Festival drew more than 62,000 spectators across its four days in 2024. The Dublin Racing Festival, launched in 2018, now attracts crowds approaching 25,000. And the September meeting opens the Irish Champions Festival, with the Curragh taking the second day.

What is changing next

The track is still evolving. From 2026 the European Pattern Committee approved upgrading the Golden Fleece Stakes to Group 1 status, with its distance increasing from eight furlongs to nine, giving Leopardstown a third Flat Group 1. That keeps a neat symmetry with the official marketing line: 23 meetings a year, 13 Grade 1 races over jumps, and now three Group 1 races on the Flat.

A note on betting the place

For all the prestige, Leopardstown is an honest track for punters rather than a generous one. The stiff, galloping circuit and that long three-furlong climb tend to let the best horse win, which is partly why favourites land a high share of the marquee races: 12 of the last 20 Irish Champion Stakes and 16 of the last 22 Irish Champion Hurdles went to the market leader. That is a statement of fact, not a tip. Over a full season backing every favourite to starting price still loses money to the bookmakers' margin, here as everywhere. What Leopardstown reliably offers is not an edge but a fair test, on a course Captain Quin laid out in 1888 and Ireland has been improving ever since.