Mullins already targeting treble for his star
WIZARD Willie Mullins will target a third successive Gold Cup with Al Boum Photo after a day of days for the Irish champion trainer at the Cheltenham Festival.
Mullins reeled off the first four winners on the card to finish with a magnificent seven for the meeting and pip Gordon Elliott by a nose – they were split on the count-back of third-place finishes, six to four.
Elliott went down with all guns blazing as he saddled Chosen Mate to win the Grand Annual Chase.
With Cork handler Eugene O’Sullivan bridging a 29-year gap between triumphs in the Foxhunters Chase with It Came To Pass, ridden by his daughter Maxine, Irish-trained horses won six races out of seven and finished with 17 winners for the week to retain the Prestbury Cup.
Paul Townend claimed the leading rider’s title for the first time, with a final-day treble on Burning Victory (Triumph Hurdle), Monkfish (Albert Bartlett Hurdle) and Al Boum Photo.
Townend and Barry Geraghty each had five winners but the Cork pilot had more second-place finishes to edge out Geraghty, who won for Mullins on Saint Roi in the County Hurdle. Davy Russell was third on three wins.
This was a magical afternoon for Mullins as Al Boum Photo spearheaded his 2196/1 four-timer which was worth €680,000 in prize money and clinched a seventh top trainer’s title at the meeting.
After sending out six different horses to come second in the Gold Cup, Mullins has won the Blue Riband with the same horse in successive years. ‘It’s been an unbelievable day,’ he said.
‘We didn’t get much luck on Tuesday but we got a huge slice of luck in the first race (Triumph Hurdle) and then I think in the second, third and fourth races
probably the best horse won. Last year my son (Patrick) was in an ambulance and I had a horse still out on the track. This year I had nothing to worry about.
‘Real Steel ran a cracker and Kemboy was disappointing, but I just thought the ground didn’t suit him.
‘It’s fantastic to have a guy like Paul Townend riding for you. He had a tough job taking over from Ruby Walsh but I think today proved that he was well up to it.’
Al Boum Photo raced once all season, at Tramore, before kicking sand in the faces of his rivals again yesterday.
‘I didn’t worry much about the statistics (regarding back-to-back winners) and usually I do, because of the way we had prepared him. I thought that statistically this preparation was going to work, turning it on its head a bit.
‘I didn’t see anything all year that I was afraid of at all. If the same horse turned up as last year, I thought that it would take something we hadn’t seen to beat him.
‘I’m very happy with two (Gold
Cups) and hopefully we are going to try for three. He loves Cheltenham and we’ll probably take the same route. It wasn’t the plan last year – it was the weather that forced us down to Tramore.’
Mullins admitted he ‘self-medicated’ on Tuesday when he didn’t have a winner and Benie Des Dieux was chinned in the Mares’ Hurdle.
‘I was expecting a lot more from the first two days and it’s tough. It’s a big story when we don’t have winners but you have to earn them. We just didn’t have the luck on Tuesday,’ he added.
‘I self-medicated a lot that night! It can be hard on the old brain cells but everyone has bad days.’
Yesterday was most certainly one of the better ones.
“It’s fantastic
to have a guy like Townend”