It's rare that over €1.5 million is bet in one day at a racetrack but Leopardstown's St Stephen's Day crowd still seemed to be feeling some post-Christmas blues.

Although a total of €1,044,416 was bet with the bookmakers, including €209,705 on the featured Denny Gold Medal Novice Chase alone, it was still €346,313 down on last year's bookie turnover.

The Tote figure of €490,114 was marginally up but the bad morning weather clearly made an impact on the public with the 15,501 attendance down a thousand on 2002.

The silver lining, however, was that Central House provided the perfect ending to the day-one feature as he justified 9 to 4 favouritism in an incident-packed contest.

Only eight lined up for the €100,000 race but the huge crowd got their money's worth with half the field falling.

Xenophon, the 7 to 2 third favourite, only made it to the first but the 11 to 4 second favourite, Kicking King, was in the lead and travelling strongly when exiting at the second-last.

Central House's trainer, Dessie Hughes, was happy his horse would have won anyway, and it was a timely return for jockey Paul Carberry, who was riding for the first time in almost a month after breaking a thumb.

"I was a bit worried when Kicking King kicked on three out but Paul said he had plenty left," Hughes said.

Central House is now a 16-1 shot for the Arkle Chase at Cheltenham.

RTÉ pundit Ted Walsh trained the winner of the Denny Juvenile Hurdle as Top Strategy outpaced the favourite, Al Eile, and it was also a day to remember for trainer Tony Mullins, who saddled three winners.

McGruders Cross, Piercing Sun and Alphazar paid total odds of 181 to 1.