WILLIE ENDS HIS HOODOO AT LAST
After six runner-up finishes, Mullins lands the big one
WILLIE MULLINS revealed he thought his way of training horses meant winning the coveted Gold Cup at Cheltenham just ‘wasn’t to be’.
He knows different now after Paul Townend, 28, was picture perfect on Al Boum Photo to claim jump racing’s most prestigious prize.
Victory with his 26th runner in the race, and his ‘third or fourth choice’ in the race completed the set of Festival ‘majors’ for Mullins and erased the memory of 20 years of near-misses.
‘Not winning the Gold Cup used to bug me,’ he admitted.
‘The first one, the second, the third, and then the fourth. I’d probably got used to the disappointment of never winning it with six seconds.
‘I’d probably resigned myself to that. I wasn’t going to get obsessive about it. I felt maybe my way of training wasn’t the Gold Cup way, maybe it wasn’t to be,’ said Mullins in his hour of glory.
‘But this is the icing on the cake. I never expected to get it and I’m delighted for Paul. He’s been with me since he was 17 and has always been so natural.’
Mullins saluted the owners, Marie and Joe Donnelly, who also own Melon, second in the Champion Hurdle two years running.
This was Mullins 65th Festival winner, a record, and it helped reclaim the title of leading trainer, edging out Nicky Henderson on the number of placed horses after they had four winners apiece.
Nico De Boinville claimed the leading jockey, pipping Barry Geraghty on two wins and multiple places, including second on the admirable Anibale Fly in the Gold Cup.
In front of a record 71,816 attendance, Geraghty and ‘The Fly’ got to within two and a half lengths of Al Boum Photo who was the last horse standing of the Mullins quartet before half-way.
‘Before the first circuit had finished, three of them out and I was thinking another year of disappointment,’ said Mullins.
‘But every time I came to Paul, he was so well balanced and the horse was going along in a rhythm. You could see fence by fence, he was staying in the first four the whole time.
‘And I thought, “We have a life here”. Then about the fourth or fifth last, he needed a long stride, Paul asked him for it and he got it. And I thought “Wow.”
‘I know Paul’s body language that he hadn’t gone for anything, that he still thought he had plenty of petrol left in the tank.
‘All we needed then was little bits of daylight. He got a bit close to the second last but met the last perfectly.
‘I looked up at the winning post then back at what was coming behind us and thought to myself 99 out of 100 he’s going to make it.’
The seven-year-old’s prep for Cheltenham was a spin in Tramore on New Year’s Day, not a track associated with Gold Cup winners. ‘We went there because we couldn’t find soft ground anywhere,’ explained Mullins.
The planning of Presenting Percy was even more unusual, but the Pat Kelly-trained favourite never landed a blow as eighth of the nine finishers.
He was found to be lame afterwards and will fight another day, unlike Mullins’ Invitation Only who suffered a fatal fall on the first circuit.
Watching the dramatic events unfold was the remarkable Maureen Mullins, who was attending her 66th consecutive Festival, and has seen it all, including Dawn Run’s Gold Cup triumph in 1986 for her late husband Paddy.
‘Two weeks before Cheltenham, my mother starts getting ready,’ revealed her eldest son.
‘She nearly came in for a flu vaccination when we had to give it to all the horses, just in case she missed out.
‘When Dawn Run won I didn’t get home for three or four days, and it might take a bit longer this time,’ Mullins quipped.
And well he might. Irish trainers claimed 14 wins out of 28 races in a Festival where the bantams landed a blow on the chin of heavyweights.
Gavin Cromwell, Martin Brassil and Ted Walsh sent over a runner apiece and bagged the Champion Hurdle, Ballymore Novices Hurdle and Kim Muir Chase respectively.
They illustrated their ability to prepare a good horse to win a good race.
As Mullins knows, it helps when you have that bit more ammo to fire.
AL BOUM PHOTO gave trainer Willie Mullins his first victory in the Magners Cheltenham Gold Cup following a dramatic race for the showpiece event at the Prestbury Park course. Leading at the second-last fence, Al Boum Photo (12-1) dug deep for jockey Paul Townend, who was also winning the Gold Cup for the first time. ‘I’ve got used to the disappointment of finishing second,’ Mullins admitted. ‘I thought Bellshill would take a lot of beating, but Ruby (Walsh) wasn’t happy with him and pulled him up early. To have three of the four runners out of the race before they came to the secondlast first time round. ‘Every time I looked at Paul, his body language told me he was very happy and the horse was relaxed.’ In contrast to the joy in the Mullins camp, trainer Joseph O’Brien was devastated after Sir Erec, owned by JP McManus, suffered a fatal injury in the JCB Triumph Hurdle, in which Pentland Hills ran out the shock winner. ‘I’m devastated, JP is distraught. Everyone in the yard is,’ said O’Brien.