In a fickle world, true greats make their own luck
PEOPLE who know Willie Mullins suggest he wouldn’t be interested in the attention he received on Wednesday in Cheltenham. It came anyway, and in great gushes, first in the Cotswolds and then in the reaction here to his achievement in becoming the first trainer to record 100 winners at the Festival.
He was plastered across front pages, he was captured on the back pages, and he filled the supplements that seek to guide casual punters over the treacherous terrain of national hunt form and fancies.
The timing of the Cheltenham Festival makes blather about the luck of the Irish inevitable, and there was no shortage of visitors dressed as leprechauns eager to make shows of themselves for the cameras. The enormous success of Irish trainers and horses at the Festival in recent years, led by Mullins, has seen Cheltenham serve as a launch pad into St
Patrick’s Day, leaving gamblers happy but also casting a broader glow that allows nationwide satisfaction to be taken at the deeds of this remarkable man.
It’s why Mullins lead the bulletins. Had he endured a more testing four days – and he has known plenty of lean times at Cheltenham, leaving with no winners on occasion – then Mullins would have been forgotten by everyone except those left despondent after backing his charges.
It’s a grim truth of sport that was made brutally plain after defeat in Twickenham last weekend.
Afine Irish team, the best to represent the island, lost two players in the back-line to head injuries, which was disastrous after Andy Farrell picked only two backs among his eight replacements.
It made dealing with a tremendously vigorous English performance eventually impossible, and Ireland couldn’t keep them at bay.
They lost by just a point, but margins don’t much interest those who take such losses in a weirdly personal way.
It wasn’t so much the social media bile that was interesting – that is inevitable, and best ignored – but the air of dejection that settled on the country like a weather front. That is both reflective of the popularity of the rugby team, and also a reminder of how capricious public sentiment is.
If there is a broad swathe of supporters who understand how close Ireland came to winning in Twickenham despite not playing well, and in the face of significant injury disruption, there is a sizeable number too who struggle with defeat, and have no interest in considering the background to any setback. We are all, by degrees, guilty of this, because it can be no other way.
Besides the tight circle that work with him, no one can understand the hard work that Mullins puts into training his horses.
He hasn’t become a towering figure in a multi-billion euro industry by chance. He’s done so in the face of enormous competition but also fierce challenges, none steeper than when Michael O’Leary’s Gigginstown Stud removed all 60 of its horses from Mullins’ yard in 2016, after a disagreement over training fees.
He rebuilt his empire, remaining largely inscrutable behind the amiable smile peeking out beneath his fedora.
As commentators like Ruby Walsh made clear this week, though, what Mullins has managed to do is phenomenal. We hail it as an Irish triumph, and his is a success that makes punters happy and transmits a glow that reaches even those uninterested in horseracing.
Our stake in his success is tangential to the point of non-existent, though – we associate with it because of nationality. And that’s important in international sport, and it’s what inspires unforgettable scenes like the ones in the Stade de France last autumn when the rugby team defeated South Africa and Scotland, and ran New Zealand desperately close, too.
Failure in that match brought unhinged recrimination, too.
In the aftermath of the crushing defeats they endured in the referendum votes last week, no representative of the Government was in Dublin Castle for the announcement of the official results. It was an ungracious oversight, but also a practical enactment of the old line about failure being an orphan.
Success has many fathers you might think, watching Irish supporters whooping around Cheltenham. But it doesn’t.
Greats, be they in racing or rugby, make their own luck.