Thurles
National Hunt

Thurles is Irish jumps racing’s great survivor — and its survival is genuinely recent news. Ireland’s only privately owned racecourse, in the Molony family’s hands since the early 1900s (racing here was first recorded in 1732), announced its closure outright in August 2025 when the family retired. Horse Racing Ireland stepped in within the month, racing resumed that October, and after an industry campaign — Willie Mullins prominent in it — the IHRB licensed racing through to March 2027, with the next season starting 8 October 2026. Nothing beyond that date is yet confirmed. Eleven fixtures run October to March, most of them Thursdays.

The track is a right-handed, sharp, undulating oval of about a mile and a quarter — seven fences a circuit with two in the home straight, six hurdle flights, the chase course laid out around the outside of the hurdles track. The shape every rider talks about is the hill: a climbing back straight that Charlie Swan says you must respect “or you’ll struggle to get home.” What happens after it is the one point sources genuinely dispute — most course guides describe a fairly steep descent into a two-furlong home straight, while others call the finish itself uphill. This page reports both readings rather than picking one.

Late January brings the Grade 2 Kinloch Brae Chase over 2m4½f and fourteen fences — a race with a habit of naming Gold Cup winners early: Don Cossack (2015, 2016) and Sizing John (2017) both went from Thurles to Cheltenham glory, Allaho won it three times, and Appreciate It took the last two renewals. Mullins has seven wins in it, Paul Townend six. January’s other Grade 2, the Anaglog’s Daughter Mares Novice Chase, honours the 1980 Arkle heroine of that name.

Swan’s ground observation is why Thurles exists in the winter calendar: when everywhere else floods, Thurles usually races. The free-draining turf goes in “five or six inches” at worst, and the course lost very few meetings across the decades — which is precisely why the honest caveat matters. In February 2025 waterlogging did beat the reputation, forcing the Michael Purcell Memorial Novice Hurdle to move to Naas. The reputation is real; it is not absolute. His wide-line tip is the more bettable half: on soft ground the inside gets dug up, and better ground sits out wider — especially late on a card.

February 2025 also brought the course’s darkest day. Michael O’Sullivan, a 24-year-old jockey, suffered a fatal fall at the final fence of a handicap chase and died ten days later. The IHRB’s critical-incident review found no evidence of human error, equipment failure or environmental factors as the primary cause, attributing the tragedy to the inherent risks of racing, and made recommendations including a watering system for ground consistency — reported at over €300,000, and still not installed as of the April 2026 licence renewal. Timeform separately characterises the chase course as carrying the highest proportion of casualties in Ireland, the last two fences the tricky ones. That is not a betting angle; it is context a course guide owes its readers.

The pace story is measured, and emphatic: front-runners and prominent racers combined have won over 78% of all chases here (Geegeez and Timeform agree on the figure — likely from overlapping data, so treat it as one strong reading rather than two independent ones). Timeform’s dated 2020 snapshot adds detail: front-runners at 17.8% overall, 18.32% and a huge +108.03 in handicap chases, 29% in non-handicaps. Willie Mullins has saddled over 250 winners at Thurles across his career; Townend’s recent strike rates here sit in the mid-forties percent.

Thurles’ pace bias is quantified, and it is one of the starkest published for any Irish chase course: front-runners and prominent racers combined have won over 78% of all chases here — a figure Geegeez and Timeform both publish (so similar they likely share underlying data; treat it as one strong reading). Timeform’s snapshot — explicitly dated September 2020 — breaks it down: front-runners 17.8% overall with +73.57 profit, 18.32% and +108.03 in handicap chases, 29% in non-handicaps. The mechanism is the back-straight climb: closers spend their finishing effort just reaching the leaders.

Hurdles carry a nuance worth respecting: Timeform found no profitable front-running angle in handicap hurdles specifically — yet front and prominent runners still won 79.64% of non-handicap hurdles. Position wins everywhere at Thurles; it just stops being an automatic profit centre once handicappers have priced it in. And every figure above predates 2020’s date stamp — re-weigh accordingly as fresh seasons accumulate.