String of top-class rides tempt Mullins to make pro switch
The jockey, who is assistant trainer to his father, Willie, could expect to have a dozen top-class rides for the stable, including Sharjah in the Champion Hurdle and Melon in the Ryanair Chase.
Considered outside the UK government’s definition of elite sportsmen, amateurs are not expected be able to return until March 29 when grassroots sport opens up again in England – too late for Cheltenham but in time for the Grand National meeting at Aintree from April 8-10.
Derek O’Connor, the most successful jockey in Irish point-to-point history, who has four Festival winners under his belt, said: “I would have hoped to have picked up rides in all the amateur races, and, obviously, it’s disappointing – but it’s just unfortunate. I suppose the most important thing is the Festival going ahead.”
Fellow amateur Sam Waley-Cohen admitted the writing had been on the wall since the beginning of the latest lockdown.
“It’s had time to sink in,” he said.
“There’s not really a lot to say about it. People are losing their livelihoods with the closing of point-to-points, which puts it in context. I just hope the British Horseracing Authority is proactive in getting amateur races going again from March 29.”
It is not just leading amateurs who had been looking forward to the meeting. Albi Tufnell, pupil assistant to Fergal O’Brien, has spent all season anticipating his first Festival ride.
“It’s frustrating,” he said, “the Foxhunters is the amateur’s Gold Cup and the horse qualified at Doncaster today. There have been a lot of frustrations this year but it seems there is, at least, light at the end of the tunnel.” (© Telegraph Media Group Limited 2021)
PATRICK MULLINS, who is due to ride two favourites – Kilcruit in the bumper race and Billaway in the hunter chase – is looking into the possibility of turning professional ahead of the Cheltenham Festival after it was confirmed yesterday that amateurs would not be allowed to ride at the meeting.
The decision to change race conditions means that for the first time in its 161-year history runners in the National Hunt Chase, the festival’s oldest event, will be ridden by professional jockeys.
The other races traditionally confined to the unpaid ranks, the Kim Muir-Fulke Walwyn Chase and the hunter chase, will also now be ridden by professionals only. As a result, the meeting will lose some of it charm.
“It’s not unexpected that amateurs cannot ride but it is nevertheless disappointing,” said Mullins, 31, the 12-times champion amateur of Ireland.
“But I have such an outstanding book of rides, I have to consider turning pro.”
In Ireland, jockeys can return to the amateur ranks after a certain amount of time out and provided they have not ridden more than 25 winners as a professional, which could, possibly, open a way back for Mullins. If times are strange enough to consider a date change for the Grand National, then there is no harm in exploring the small print in the rules.