Horse racing in Ireland predates the steeplechase by a long way. The ancient text Togail Bruidne Da Derga, the Destruction of the Mansion of Da-Derga, describes chariot races on the Curragh of Kildare during the reign of Conaire Mor, somewhere between 110 BC and 60 AD. A 7th-century gloss to the Liber Hymnorum mentions the same Curragh plain. The Book of Leinster carries an early poem about races at the Curragh and near Croom in County Limerick, and about a tradition of racing on the beach in Kerry. The first datable evidence is a 1603 royal warrant entitling the governor of Derry to hold horse-racing fairs. In 1666, under Charles II, the King's Plate Races were introduced, designed to favour a horse fast enough to win at four miles and strong enough to carry twelve stone over that distance. The winners became sought-after stallions, and the Irish thoroughbred began to take shape. The Down Royal Corporation of Horse Breeders established a studbook in 1685.

Then came Blake and O'Callaghan. Their match in 1752 has a claim to be the first true steeplechase. The riders had no marked course, only the two steeples to navigate by, and they crossed open country at whatever pace and angle they could manage. The race was won, the wine drunk, the story told. Other gentlemen began to copy them, and the form spread - first across Munster, then across Ireland, eventually to England, then on to America, France, Australia. By the 1830s, artificial courses with fences and ditches in fixed positions were being laid out, the rules formalized, and weight allowances by age introduced. National Hunt racing, the modern descendant of that 1752 ride, is now contested at twenty-three Irish courses for a season running roughly November through April. The Punchestown Festival and the Galway Races each draw crowds in excess of 100,000. The original Blake-O'Callaghan course is still ridden as a memorial event in Cork.

The reason Ireland breeds racehorses well, and has done so for centuries, is partly geological. The limestone bedrock of the central plain and parts of Munster pulls calcium up through the soil and into the grass, which in turn pulls it into the bones of foals grazing on those fields. The wet, temperate climate keeps the grass growing for nine or ten months of the year. There are now over 43,000 Thoroughbreds in Ireland - thirty-five percent of the country's entire equine population - and more horses per head of human population than in any other European country. Around 8,000 foals are born each year. The Irish National Stud, founded in 1915 as the British National Stud and renamed after independence, sits on the Curragh, the same plain where chariots once raced. Ireland sets the highest average prize money per race in Europe; the 2016 total was 56.8 million euros.

Roughly twenty thousand people were thought to be employed in Irish racing during the First World War. The British government's brief 1917 ban, prompted by complaints about how much oats were being fed to thoroughbreds at a time of food shortage, caused such an outcry in Ireland that the ban was largely lifted within weeks. The industry today is regulated by the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (which took over from the Turf Club in January 2018) and overseen economically by Horse Racing Ireland, descended from the 1945 Irish Racing Board. There are over 700 licensed trainers in Ireland, almost 1,900 racehorse owners in the Association of Irish Racehorse Owners, and 80,000 visitors who travel to Ireland each year to attend race meetings. Jonjo O'Neill, from nearby Castletownroche, became one of the great National Hunt jockeys and trainers. Buttevant remains a working market town with a 13th-century Franciscan friary, two stone bridges, and a racecourse, Cahirmee, that still hosts one of the oldest horse fairs in Europe.