Navan
Flat
Proudstown Road, Navan, County Meath · 56km north-west of Dublin
Turf
Left-Handed
Galloping
Fair Draw
Navan also stages National Hunt racing. Read the National Hunt racecourse guide →
What is Navan racecourse like?
Track Character
Navan’s Flat identity lives in the shadow of its jumps reputation, and that is precisely what makes it useful: the same fair, galloping, stiff-finishing track, read by far fewer punters. The course opened in September 1921 as Proudstown Park, is owned by Horse Racing Ireland, and threads roughly half a dozen Flat fixtures through its ~18-raceday year, from an opening card in late March to a final one in late October.
The round course is the jumps oval — about a mile and a half, left-handed, with a three-and-a-half-furlong home straight rising from two furlongs out. Sprints run on a separate straight six-furlong course fed by a two-and-a-half-furlong chute. The finish does the same work it does over hurdles: this is a stamina-at-the-trip track, and Mick Kinane’s one-line summary — a very fair track with a very stiff finish — is the whole model.
The black type clusters on one April card. The Salsabil Stakes, a 1m2f fillies’ contest, was upgraded from Listed to Group 3 in 2024 and carried €70,000 in 2026 — Aidan O’Brien has won it six times. Sharing the card is the Vintage Crop Stakes over 1m6f, the stayers’ curtain-raiser that went the other way: Group 3 from 2014, downgraded to Listed from 2022, €52,500 in 2026. Its roll of honour outruns its grade — Yeats won it in 2008 before his four Ascot Gold Cups, O’Brien has taken it twelve times, and Kyprios won three of the last four renewals (2022, 2024, 2025).
One more line for the record books: Colin Keane sealed the fastest riding century in Irish Flat history at Navan, on 28 August 2021. The course’s Flat cards are workmanlike — maidens, handicaps, the odd fillies’ listed race — which is exactly the grade of racing where a fair track with one honest question (do you stay?) rewards disciplined reading.
— Mick Kinane, former champion Irish Flat jockey — At The Races
Kinane’s read is the one the data backs to an unusual degree: Navan is that rare Irish track where the honest answer on the draw is “barely matters.” The two questions that do decide races here are stamina at the trip and, in winter-adjacent months, ground depth. The full draw picture — including the one mild caveat at the extremes — is below.
Course Facts
- Circuit ~1½ miles, left-handed, galloping — a 3½f straight climbing from two furlongs out
- Sprints A straight 6f course, fed by a 2½f chute
- Draw Effectively fair at every trip — at most a mild penalty for very high stalls at 5f and 1m (handicap samples)
- Season Late March to late October, around six Flat cards inside an ~18-fixture year
- Test Stamina at the trip — the finish is rated one of the stiffest in Ireland
Black-Type Calendar
- Salsabil Stakes Gr.3, 1m2f, fillies — April; upgraded from Listed in 2024; €70,000 in 2026; O’Brien ×6
- Vintage Crop Stakes Listed, 1m6f — April; Group 3 until its 2022 downgrade; €52,500 in 2026; O’Brien ×12, Kyprios ×3
- Not the Ballysax That Group 3 lives at Leopardstown — it visited Navan once, in 2014
Key Betting Angles
- Stamina Kinane: questionable stamina “can be exposed” — the single filter that matters most
- Ger Lyons 26% strike and +38.98 blind on the short sample behind this card — but 15.90% at A/E 0.87 and £67.83 down across the full since-2010 table
- Ryan Moore 22 wins from 46 rides (48%) in the five-season sample — small but emphatic
- Favourites Flat jollies A/E 0.82 across 2015–20; handicap favourites just 21%
Do front-runners win at Navan?
Navan is a galloping left-hander with a stiff, sustained climb from around the two-furlong pole, and the honest answer on running style is that it does not favour one. No settled pace bias shows up here, and no quantified figures exist that would establish one.
That is not a gap in the page, it is the finding. What the hill does is test stamina rather than sort by tactics: it asks whether a horse genuinely gets the trip, and it asks that of the leader and the closer alike. Combined with a draw that is close to irrelevant here, Navan is one of the few tracks where you can put the course to one side and judge the race purely on the horses, the trip and the ground.
Run Style Bias — Qualitative Only
No settled edge
No settled edge
No settled edge
No settled edge
Treat these bars as directional — a reading of how the track rides rather than a statistical measurement. No quantified run-style data exists for Navan and no consistent qualitative read either. A fair track is a real finding, and we would rather say so than invent a bias.
Does the draw matter at Navan?
Strong bias — material handicapping factor
Moderate lean — worth noting
Broadly fair — not a primary factor
Navan’s draw picture is unusually clean: everything quantified agrees there is close to nothing in it. The all-distances read is “pretty much zero draw bias at Navan… at every distance they race over there is very little between low, middle and high,” and the handicap-only figures say the same in softer language, finding “not much of a bias” at both 5f and 1m with the sole caveat that you “wouldn’t want to be drawn really high” at either trip. No published figures exist for 6f or 7f specifically, and nothing quantifies a field-size effect. That agreement — a rarity in Irish draw data — matches the rider’s view above word for word. The bars below reflect it honestly: no invented percentages, just the direction of travel.
The all-distances read (“pretty much zero draw bias”), the handicap-race figures for 5f and 1m and Mick Kinane’s rider view via At The Races are three independent reads reaching one conclusion. A first-party stalls pull does sit behind this section: HRB data for Navan handicaps of eight or more runners since 2010, with the draw cut into thirds within each field size so every stall is judged against the number of chances it actually gets, and, where the sample allows, cross-checked against the value returned by each quarter of the draw.
Which trainers and jockeys win most at Navan?
| Trainer | Runs | Wins | Win% | Places | Place% | A/E | P/L |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 O’Brien, A P | 533 | 135 | 25.33% | 270 | 50.66% | 0.99 | +17.67 |
| 2 Lyons, G M | 390 | 62 | 15.90% | 160 | 41.03% | 0.87 | -67.83 |
| 3 Harrington, Mrs John | 381 | 45 | 11.81% | 123 | 32.28% | 0.89 | -73.08 |
| 4 Bolger, J S | 401 | 40 | 9.98% | 131 | 32.67% | 0.79 | -23.08 |
| 5 O’Brien, Joseph Patrick | 332 | 39 | 11.75% | 115 | 34.64% | 0.77 | -78.73 |
| 6 Weld, D K | 328 | 35 | 10.67% | 110 | 33.54% | 0.63 | -162.79 |
| 7 Lynam, Edward | 264 | 30 | 11.36% | 81 | 30.68% | 0.98 | -69.51 |
| 8 Murtagh, J P | 248 | 30 | 12.10% | 77 | 31.05% | 0.92 | -55.80 |
| 9 McCreery, W | 303 | 29 | 9.57% | 87 | 28.71% | 0.87 | -78.41 |
| 10 Oliver, Andrew | 279 | 23 | 8.24% | 72 | 25.81% | 1.07 | +73.08 |
| 11 Condon, K J | 159 | 20 | 12.58% | 63 | 39.62% | 1.05 | -0.59 |
| 12 Cromwell, Gavin Patrick | 149 | 18 | 12.08% | 55 | 36.91% | 1.07 | +7.38 |
| 13 O’Callaghan, M D | 107 | 17 | 15.89% | 38 | 35.51% | 1.04 | +5.70 |
| 14 Mulvany, Michael | 269 | 15 | 5.58% | 72 | 26.77% | 0.65 | -105.00 |
| 15 McConnell, John C | 273 | 13 | 4.76% | 43 | 15.75% | 0.84 | -103.50 |
| 16 Stack, J A | 83 | 13 | 15.66% | 29 | 34.94% | 1.18 | +19.84 |
| 17 McGuinness, Adrian | 232 | 12 | 5.17% | 40 | 17.24% | 0.71 | -95.00 |
| 18 Meade, Noel | 178 | 12 | 6.74% | 48 | 26.97% | 0.61 | -106.62 |
| 19 Cotter, Kieran P | 97 | 12 | 12.37% | 21 | 21.65% | 1.24 | +1.25 |
| 20 Halford, M | 180 | 11 | 6.11% | 51 | 28.33% | 0.52 | -128.87 |
Navan Flat · Current trainers, since 2010
| Jockey | Runs | Wins | Win% | Places | Place% | A/E | P/L |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Keane, C T | 567 | 78 | 13.76% | 222 | 39.15% | 0.81 | -120.90 |
| 2 Foley, Shane | 567 | 64 | 11.29% | 186 | 32.80% | 0.85 | -199.61 |
| 3 Lee, W J | 463 | 55 | 11.88% | 147 | 31.75% | 0.94 | -87.04 |
| 4 Hayes, C D | 610 | 47 | 7.70% | 145 | 23.77% | 0.78 | -141.90 |
| 5 Heffernan, J A | 390 | 44 | 11.28% | 111 | 28.46% | 0.91 | -143.86 |
| 6 McDonogh, D P | 439 | 40 | 9.11% | 124 | 28.25% | 0.78 | -136.33 |
| 7 Lordan, W M | 424 | 39 | 9.20% | 119 | 28.07% | 0.71 | -178.54 |
| 8 Carroll, G F | 419 | 29 | 6.92% | 103 | 24.58% | 0.79 | -112.00 |
| 9 Moore, Ryan | 62 | 28 | 45.16% | 39 | 62.90% | 1.11 | +11.00 |
| 10 Roche, L F | 325 | 24 | 7.38% | 61 | 18.77% | 0.95 | -91.25 |
| 11 Coen, Ben M | 256 | 23 | 8.98% | 75 | 29.30% | 0.77 | -116.28 |
| 12 Whelan, R P | 349 | 22 | 6.30% | 81 | 23.21% | 0.74 | -161.16 |
| 13 McMonagle, Dylan B | 181 | 21 | 11.60% | 63 | 34.81% | 0.84 | -18.35 |
| 14 Cleary, R P | 338 | 16 | 4.73% | 49 | 14.50% | 0.95 | -116.70 |
| 15 McCullagh, N G | 279 | 15 | 5.38% | 43 | 15.41% | 0.72 | -106.70 |
| 16 Crosse, Nathan | 179 | 14 | 7.82% | 43 | 24.02% | 1.00 | -1.00 |
| 17 Ryan, Gavin | 185 | 11 | 5.95% | 42 | 22.70% | 0.68 | -131.81 |
| 18 McAteer, L T | 104 | 10 | 9.62% | 23 | 22.12% | 1.21 | -21.42 |
| 19 Slattery, A J | 175 | 9 | 5.14% | 30 | 17.14% | 0.64 | -97.50 |
| 20 Whearty, R | 103 | 9 | 8.74% | 29 | 28.16% | 1.03 | -15.87 |
Navan Flat · Current riders, since 2010
Which sires do best at Navan?
A/E above 1.0 indicates market underestimation.
| Sire | Runs | Wins | Win% | Places | Place% | A/E | P/L |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Galileo (IRE) | 299 | 53 | 17.73% | 116 | 38.80% | 0.90 | -71.47 |
| 2 Footstepsinthesand | 199 | 19 | 9.55% | 53 | 26.63% | 1.11 | +20.38 |
| 3 Dandy Man (IRE) | 267 | 18 | 6.74% | 63 | 23.60% | 0.73 | -124.69 |
| 4 Fastnet Rock (AUS) | 122 | 18 | 14.75% | 37 | 30.33% | 1.16 | -13.14 |
| 5 Starspangledbanner (AUS) | 110 | 18 | 16.36% | 38 | 34.55% | 1.13 | +36.41 |
| 6 Zoffany (IRE) | 155 | 14 | 9.03% | 44 | 28.39% | 0.74 | -52.04 |
| 7 Teofilo (IRE) | 148 | 14 | 9.46% | 49 | 33.11% | 0.74 | -55.95 |
| 8 No Nay Never (USA) | 117 | 14 | 11.97% | 38 | 32.48% | 0.75 | -59.73 |
| 9 Invincible Spirit (IRE) | 162 | 13 | 8.02% | 47 | 29.01% | 0.67 | -79.01 |
| 10 Holy Roman Emperor (IRE) | 152 | 13 | 8.55% | 42 | 27.63% | 0.73 | -71.47 |
| 11 Big Bad Bob (IRE) | 103 | 13 | 12.62% | 27 | 26.21% | 1.13 | -5.62 |
| 12 Australia | 94 | 13 | 13.83% | 31 | 32.98% | 0.99 | -25.14 |
| 13 Rock Of Gibraltar (IRE) | 90 | 13 | 14.44% | 29 | 32.22% | 1.56 | +78.00 |
| 14 Dark Angel (IRE) | 133 | 12 | 9.02% | 36 | 27.07% | 0.85 | -56.92 |
| 15 Montjeu (IRE) | 54 | 12 | 22.22% | 20 | 37.04% | 0.99 | -5.42 |
| 16 Dubawi (IRE) | 44 | 12 | 27.27% | 18 | 40.91% | 1.76 | +55.08 |
| 17 Kodiac | 182 | 10 | 5.49% | 46 | 25.27% | 0.57 | -99.32 |
| 18 Camelot | 99 | 10 | 10.10% | 30 | 30.30% | 0.77 | -52.96 |
| 19 Exceed And Excel (AUS) | 94 | 9 | 9.57% | 24 | 25.53% | 0.83 | -12.25 |
| 20 Vocalised (USA) | 80 | 9 | 11.25% | 19 | 23.75% | 1.47 | +37.75 |
Navan Flat · Since 2010
Betting Tips for Navan Flat Turf
Bet the stiff finish, not the draw
Navan hands you back the time other tracks make you spend on stall maths — reinvest it in stamina reading. The climb from two out exposes questionable stayers with unusual reliability; a proven-at-the-trip galloper beats a speedier horse stretching out here more often than the market prices.
State the window on O’Brien numbers
Ballydoyle dominates Navan’s Flat black type — six Salsabils, twelve Vintage Crops — but the course-wide tallies conflict: a five-season window shows 48 wins at 31%, a longer sample 92 at 23%. The pattern is real; any precise number needs its window stated.
Ger Lyons is the strike-rate angle
Lyons runs at a 26% strike rate here — a genuine each-way angle, even if the course’s own level-stakes returns are marginal. O’Brien wins the races everyone watches; Lyons is the each-way alternative.
Ryan Moore’s 48% is small-sample gold
Twenty-two wins from forty-six rides in the five-season window. The sample is small and the mounts are chosen — but when Moore ships to Navan for one or two rides, they are rarely social visits.
Handicap favourites have been poor value
Across 2015–20, Flat favourites returned a 0.82 A/E — and handicap favourites at just a 21% strike rate. Big-priced bombs fared worse still (12/1+ A/E 0.64). In Navan handicaps, the second and third tiers of the market have been where the work pays.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Over-rating an old Vintage Crop “Group” line. The Stakes was downgraded to Listed in 2022 — still black type, but no longer Group class — so weight older form at its current level.
- Underrating stamina up the finish. Navan’s home straight climbs to the line, so over the middle distances proven stamina and run style beat stall position outright — a speed type without a stayer’s engine gets found out.
- Treating “no draw bias” as “no thought required” — the figures flag a mild penalty for very high stalls at 5f and 1m in handicaps. Fair is not identical to frictionless.
- Trusting the going label on its own. Irish “yielding” is the recognised equivalent of British “good to soft”, so the word travels — but on Navan’s slow-draining subsoil the real test often sits deeper than the posted word, especially either side of winter.
Navan (Flat) Racecourse FAQs
Is there a draw bias at Navan?
What are the big Flat races at Navan?
What kind of track is Navan on the Flat?
Which trainers and jockeys do best on the Flat at Navan?
When does Navan race on the Flat?
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Want the thinking behind Navan bets?
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