Jonathan Powell talks to the master trainer
Jonathan Powell meets the master trainer
Monopolies in sport can develop with startling speed. Eight years agoWillie Mullins was delighted to return home to Ireland with two winners at the end of the Cheltenham Festival.When he managed three more in 2009 and another double 12 months later it wasn’t immediately obvious that he was about to impose a stranglehold on the race meeting that matters most in the calendar to all jumping enthusiasts.
For instance his three winners at the 2012 Festival did not begin to match the seven supplied by Nicky Henderson who ran away with the Leading Trainer award.
Mullins has topped the list for the past three years, capped by a record eight winners in 2015, a total that is now under serious threat as he fine tunes the biggest invasion force ever assembled in one yard in Eire on the eve of Cheltenham.
How did it come to this? How did one man corner the market with so many brilliant horses,most of them bought in France as youngsters?
Mullins seems as bewildered as the rest of us at the uplift in his fortunes.
He concedes, “I am as gobsmacked and my team at home at Closutton are as gobsmacked as you guys. We know it is unbelievable.We certainly don’t think we have a God given right or anything but we do appreciate having so many nice horses.”
Such is the weight of expectation for Mullins and his team of heavyweights to deliver once more at the Festival that you sense he will not sleep easily in the next few weeks as the build up to the meeting reaches a crescendo.
“With the team we are bringing over we are expected to do better,”he sighs.“So we could go to Cheltenham in March and have two or three winners and people will say that is failure.
“We could go and win the Champion Hurdle and Gold Cup and that might also be deemed failure.
“If I am honest we ourselves are expecting more than hoping which is how it used to be. But you are not entitled to anything.
“No matter how much people expect we know that failure is only around the corner. That could be us. It happens in every sport.”
Mullins’total of 41 winners at the Festival since 1995 puts him clear in second place in the all time list behind Nicky Henderson who has amassed 53 victories.
Yet for all his success at the meeting success in the Gold Cup remains frustratingly elusive. No fewer than five of his horses have finished runner-up in the race, stretching back to Florida Pearl in 2000. Perhaps that helps explain his decision to enter no fewer than eight horses this time in a bold bid to end the drought.
Florida Pearl, a nine times Grade 1 winner, stayed well enough and led between the last two fences in 2000 before finding Look Like Trouble too determined on the final, unforgiving hill.
Hedgehunter got to within two and a half lengths of another Irish horseWar of Attrition in 2006 and Sir Des Champs briefly offered hope going to the last fence in 2013 before being swamped by Bobs Worth.
On His Own was arguably the unluckiest of all Mullins’runners-up in 2014 as he lost out by a short head to LordWindermere in as dramatic and controversial a bunch finish as has ever been witnessed in the Gold Cup.Many on the course felt that On His Own would get the race in the stewards’ room but the result stood after a lengthy inquiry.
Mullins and On His Own’s owner Graham Wylie then had the option of launching an appeal. It is to their eternal credit that they chose not to pursue the matter.
Looking back now the trainer reflects on that decision with a sporting attitude that is not so prevalent in other corners of the racing world.
He recalls, “Plenty of people said I should have appealed but I didn’t want to win the Gold Cup in London in the middle of May and neither did Graham.
“I used to be the opposite but now I treat it as a referee’s decision in a match and accept it.”
Last year the raw six-year-old Djakadam became Mullins fifth runner-up in the Gold Cup. It was a mighty run in the race for such a young horse but his late,late charge could not quite peg back the splendid Coneygree.
Given that Mullins is famed for leaving decisions until the very last minute we are unlikely to know the exact make up of his Gold Cup challenge for a while.
Don Poli, owned by Gigginstown, is surely a definite starter. Gigginstown also ownValseur Lido who was emerging as an unexpected contender for the race when he fell in front at the last fence in the Irish Gold Cup at Leopardstown earlier this month.
Djakadam will surely join them in the line up though he fluffed his lines when falling at half-way at Cheltenham in a key trial in January.
Then there is the hugely talented Vautour, who is perceived by the best judges at Closutton in County Carlow as the most talented of all the chasers in the yard. His victory in the JLT Novice Chase at the Festival a year ago was nothing short of breathtaking. His jumping is springheeled, and he has speed to burn which raises some questions about his ability to last the last quarter mile of the staminasapping Gold Cup.
Those doubst surfaced once more at Kempton on Boxing Day whenVautour was
caught in the last couple of strides in the King George V1 Chase by Cue Card after looking sure to win for most of the last half mile.
With Cue Card in the form of his life this season the King George looks to be the most reliable piece of evidence for those seeking the winner of this year’s Gold Cup.
Stable jockey Ruby Walsh has a tricky choice betweenVautour and Djakadam.It is not one he will be making until the last minute.Walsh is by far the most successful jockey at the Festival since 1945 with a total of 45 winners.
Mullins and Walsh started the opening day of the 2015 Cheltenham Festival with a blistering treble provided by Douvan, Un De Sceaux and Faugheen. Many punters on both sides of the Irish Sea had put together those three horses in a yankee with Annie Power in the Mares’race that followed Faugheen’s success in the Champion Hurdle. Bookmakers dodged the deadliest of bullets when Annie Power fell heavily at the final flight with victory beckoning. Yet Mullins still won the race with his second string Glens Melody, ridden by Paul Townend.
I do not normally pay attention to the spurious claims of the bookies’ PR men who so often falsely claim this or that horse has been backed to win a fortune when the truth is that many punters I know can no longer get on with most of the big firms. What they say is usually complete hogwash.
But on this occasion they were not exaggerating when they said the fall of Annie Power saved them a pay out stretching into seven figures.
This year Mullins andWalsh again look to have outstanding chances of a four timer in the same races on the opening day.
Min, a French import, is all the rage for the Skybet Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, Douvan, already as short as 1-3 in places, will surely win the Arkle bar a fall and though Faugheen is now out of the Champion Hurdle Mullins is still responsible for the first three in the ante-post market, Annie Power, Nichols Canyon and Arctic Fire
Mullins and Walsh will then hope to complete the four timer withVroumVroum Magic in the Mares’ Hurdle.
Late in the day Mullins could well saddle a fifth short priced favourite Black Hercules in the National Hunt Chase. Should he be switched to the RSA Chase the following day then the trainer has another sure-fire favourite in the race in the shape of Roi Des Francs.
Strength in depth is clearly the key to Mullins challenge in March. It is the quality of the horses he will not be bringing to Cheltenham that underline the extraordinary collection of horse power in his yard.
He first came to the Festival as a teenag-
er and has been a regular ever since, initially as a top-class amateur jockey. He won the four mile National Hunt Chase three times and also made his own bit of history by training and riding Wither or Which to land the Weatherbys Champion Bumper in 1996.
His routine as he sends over a fleet of lorries for the week has long been established though he admits with wry amusement that on one occasion a horse who did not hold an entry at Cheltenham still found his way to the course.
Mullins usually travels over on the Sunday and bases himself with his family in a house close to the racecourse which allows him to be at the track for early morning exercise and to check on the horses in the stables.
The problem for punters wanting to back Mullins raiders is that many of them start at prohibitive odds. Some aces have already fallen by the wayside, notably Faugheen and Killutagh Vic, clear market leader for the JLT Chase, who is out for the season with a leg injury which may well have been sustained during his remarkable recovery from a last fence blunder at Leopardstown. Naturally the trainer has other smart contenders including Outlander and Shaneshill.
Possibly the most exciting of all his youngster is the blisteringly fast Un De Sceaux who is already odds on to win his first Queen Mother Champion Chase. He won the Arkle in style a year ago from the front but is relaxing more in his races as he gains experience.
Un De Sceaux had a point to prove at Ascot last time after falling at Leopardstown previously and came through the test with all guns blazing.
Afterwards Walsh reported,“There was more than one good judge at Leopardstown, men who have been in racing a long time, who maintain that fall would be the making of him and they could be right. He was in control of his jumping the whole way at Ascot. I wasn’t having to make him jump, which is what you need in a championship horse.”
Mullins added, “I love the way he was a lot more settled at Ascot and wasn’t racing. He just settled into a rhythm and jumped in his own time. He sorted himself out. Ruby just sat there and let him.
“He probably has a lot more respect for his fences now. You could see that as he pricked his ears going into a fence, sorting out his stride. It was something he needed to learn.”
Mullins then let slip a glimpse of the tension he experiences each time one of his warriors approaches a fence.
“My heart takes a jump every time, whereas when it is someone else’s horse you can sit back and enjoy it.”
As Cheltenham approaches there is increasing talk of Mullins laying out his stall to add the trainers’ title in this country to his many Irish championships.
He will need to win a great deal of prize money at the Festival to catch the nine times champion Paul Nicholls, though the huge purse on offer in this year’s Crabbie’s Grand National may well ultimately decide the destination of the trophy.
Nicholls concedes, “If Willie has an awesome Cheltenham it will make things very interesting. If he wins all those big races there it is going to be almost impossible to beat him.
“Nobody believes me when I say I am not getting up in the mornings solely to be champion trainer and I’ve said that many times. What will be will be.”
As Mullins puts the finishes touches to his battalions it is important to acknowledge the strength of the annual Irish challenge at Cheltenham.
It was not always so.In 1989,for instance, there was not a single winner at the Festival trained in Eire which was in the grip of recession.
Galmoy was the only Irish trained winner in 1987 and 1988 while there were only two winners from the Emerald Isle in 1990. The good times have been a while coming.
Assessing the form of the Mullins bandwagon is not entirely straight-forward. He may appear to have an embarrassment of riches and has already had ten winners from 44 runners in England this season.
Yet five ran without distinction in the Betfair Hurdle at Newbury and there have been other well documented reverses recently, notably when all three of his runners performed below par at Doncaster.
When one of Mullins hot-pots has been turned over in Ireland this winter it has invariably been by a stable companion so you could hardly say the yard is out of form.
Yet keeping horses healthy in this dampest of winters has been a huge challenge for trainers in this country.
During a curious season when so many racing yards have been demonstrably below par only the horses of Philip Hobbs and Alan King have delivered consistently.
That is one more worry for Mullins as his moment of destiny beckons.