GO AND JUMP
Mullins denies damaging the sport
WILLIE MULLINS has rubbished suggestions his stranglehold on jump racing is damaging the sport.
Mullins has collected the Irish trainers’ title for the last 16 years in succession and won all eight Grade 1 races at the Dublin Racing Festival earlier this month.
He travels to Cheltenham next month just six winners shy of a century of Festival wins and currently trains the favourite for half of the 28 races.
“It’s not as if we go in and plunder all the good horses. We buy our horses from a selection of areas – France, English and Irish points-to-points, bumper horses and some store (young and unbroken) horses” said Mullins.
“That same option is open to everyone. Maybe we get lucky. But our team at home is good.”
Mullins’ domination has some believing the edge has been taken off the Festival but Mullins is not in agreement with that suggestion.
“It’s cyclical isn’t it?
England are not having the best time of it at the moment but there’s some brilliant trainers there,” he added.
Mullins could have close to 70 horses travelling to Cheltenham in four weeks time and feels that opposition trainers have driven him to become bigger and better than ever.
He continued: “I felt to stay relevant in the game I have to go as big as the opposition. And that’s in Ireland. To stay on par with Ireland, we built more stables. It’s grown way bigger. It’s a lot of work. What can we do? My theory in life is, ‘If you’re not going up, you’re going down’.
“I always look at others. I learn lessons from other sports, from other trainers. I’m always amazed how some fantastic trainers get to a pitch and then it goes down.
“I wonder why, what did they do wrong? I look at that and analyse
it. “And we come up with our own answers. Teams in any sport, why do they win two/three Allirelands or whatever, reach a plateau and then go down? I put that into our game.”