Situated in County Kildare, Naas is a historic Irish town known as 'Nás Na Ríogh' in the Irish Language - meaning 'Meeting place of Kings'.
The sport of Kings however, has taken place at this venue since 1920 and the surrounding areas are renowned as pure thoroughbred territory. The track is not too far from its famous big brother Punchestown, and racing takes place regularly throughout the year. Naas is an oval shaped, left handed course that is just over one mile and four furlongs in distance. The chase course has eight fences to a circuit and there is a run-in of roughly one furlong. Naas is very much a galloping course, so proven stayers tend to do well here. On the flat, horses drawn medium to high have performed well here in recent times.
Aidan O'Brien has a very respectable record here at 28%, but prices are usually restrictive so it's hard to make money from his mounts. Jockey wise, the best performer in recent times is a certain Mr Fallon. It will be interesting to see how he performs here should he return to racing as expected in September 2009.
Despite being known as 'The punters' graveyard', favourites at Naas perform reasonably well with a 34.5% strike-rate on the flat, and 32.2% over jumps. Non-handicap flat favourites perform particularly well with a strike-rate of just over 40%, and they've broke-even to level stakes over the past five years.
Previous course form is significant here with 14.2% of flat horses going on to win again on their return and such horses show a small profit if blindly backed. National Hunt course winners have a strike-rate of 15.2%, but have shown a slight loss in the past five years.