DIRECTOR’ S CUT
Willie Mullins dreams of making movies but, for now, his focus is on conquering Cheltenham without his leading cast
IF HE didn’t train racehorses for a living, Willie Mullins could see himself as a film director, perched on a high chair in Closutton’s green fields, calling the shots.
‘I think I could boss people around the set. I reckon you’d have some Westerns in there alright,’ he says with a chuckle.
As for a movie character, Mullins is akin to Will Kane in High Noon, a man of morals standing up for ’ornery folk as the bad guys hit town. With a decent streak as broad as the Barrow, Mullins treats everyone as he meets them, be they prophets, philistines or phonies.
And when journalists swarm to his stables for a pre-Cheltenham briefing, he warmly opens all doors, in yard and house. His spacious living room is adorned with photographs, salvers, cut glass, and varied mementos of magic moments on the track.
Mullins has a particular liking for an exquisite bronze figure of three horses straining at the last flight. It happened for real last year, when three of his finest, Faugheen, Arctic Fire and Hurricane Fly flew the last in the Champion Hurdle in that order, and stayed there up the hill.
This week, the trio will remain at home in Carlow, far from the arena of National Hunt excellence, cursed by a combination of old age and injury. Their absence stings Mullins, as does that of Killultagh Vic, even though his runners will start favourite in at least eight races at the Cheltenham Festival this week.
‘Numerically, we have an even stronger hand than last year, but we’ve lost an ace in Faugheen. I’m not sure we have as strong a team because of that but I’m happier now than I was a couple of weeks ago,’ he insists.
‘Cheltenham is not like going to Thurles, or somewhere like that,’ he warned, ‘where you can just turn up to win, because of the intense competition there.’
On a coffee table stands a fine chess set. The pieces don’t sit on the correct squares, which is no surprise as Mullins doesn’t play.
If he did, you suspect he’d be a grandmaster. Yet, he brings a strategic approach to Cheltenham’s check-green tablecloth, one he has refined since his first Festival winner, Tourist Attraction in 1995.
Then, Mullins was glad to have one runner at Cheltenham; now he will saddle 60. It’s a mind-boggling number, and he has mapped out a plan for each, from his Gold Cup elite, to his handicappers. ‘Everything comes into the preparation,’ he notes.
‘I focus on what’s the right race to run a horse, what I can put him in with the best chance.
‘As we get closer, we look at ground, availability of rider, what might turn up in opposition, distance, how many jumps in each race, everything.’
Mullins ran Fiveforthree in the Neptune Hurdle in 2008 because there were fewer flights in the last half mile, and it worked as the horse won. He also got it wrong, he says, about the races picked for Nichols Canyon and Pont Alexandre. ‘There is an old saying in sport that “you have to lose a final to win a final”. We find that every year we make a mistake, it pays off down the line. Every time that something disappoints us, if it’s not about the horse, it’s usually us.
‘Factors change but when you have as much information as possible, it makes for better results.’
Those results have seen Mullins plant a green, white and orange flag on Cleeve Hill as the Festival’s champion trainer four times in the past five years. Come Friday, when the whiff of cordite clears the Cheltenham corral, he should do so again.
Before then, Mullins will be that busy he may not have time to give some of his jockeys a leg up. ‘Once it starts, Cheltenham is like an avalanche, it’s a runaway train that you can’t stop.
‘We keep going back to the stables and getting more horses and saddling them up. As I always say to my guys, “s**t is going to happen somewhere along the week, get over it, and get one with the next race, we’ll deal with it when we get home”.’
Of all the races this week, the Gold Cup stands out like a beacon. Mullins refuses to let it consume him because he can’t; there are 24 races before it.
But when the bell rings in the parade ring for jockeys to saddle up, Mullins will be armed and ready with as many as five bullets to fire, Vautour, Djakadam, Don
Poli, Valseur Lido and On His Own.
He has been second in the big one before with Florida Pearl, Hedgehunter, On His Own and Djakadam, and it gnaws.
‘I don’t set out to tick the boxes of races we haven’t won. I never look at it as “we’re going to win the Gold Cup”,’ he maintains.
‘I look at it as we’re going to win races, and if that includes the big one, fantastic. As much as I’d love to win the Gold Cup, we’d need to do more. We expect more of ourselves.’
It is 30 years since Mullins’ father, Paddy, sent out Dawn Run to capture the sport’s greatest prize, and the memory remains vivid.
‘I watched her jump the last and said “she’s beat” and I turned away and was already thinking of 1987 when we could try again,’ he recalls.
‘Next minute, the whole place erupted with an Irish roar, but I had come down off the stand and couldn’t see. I said to someone “did she win?” and they said yes. So I actually didn’t see her cross the line until I saw the re-run later that night.’
Mullins rarely watches re-runs but would love to sit down next Friday night over a glass of wine and see the uncut director’s version of the Gold Cup if one of his team has come first past the post.
It’s time to bring on the empty horses. Lights, camera, action.