Willie Mullins was again the cause of dismay in all other jumps trainers last month when revealing the approximate number of horses he expected to run at the Cheltenham Festival: 50. With two days to go it appears that was no idle calculation, since the Irish champion still has 67 individual horses with entries.
They will not all run but it cannot be good news for everyone else that, at lunchtime on Sunday, he had 15 horses already stabled at the Gloucestershire track and these were reckoned merely to be his squad for the opening day of four. Fifteen times four … hearts may be sinking all around Britain as his rivals do the maths.
Or perhaps, adapting the familiar introduction to every Asterix book, one should say: “All? No! One small village of indomitable west-countrymen still holds out against the invaders.” Paul Nicholls, the British champion trainer, used a Festival preview event on Saturday to make a bullish riposte to those who are ready to send Mullins a cheque for half of Cheltenham’s prize money.
“They will not all win,” Nicholls told the crowd at Sandown racecourse. “There’s too many hype-horses on this list. They’ve been winning three- and four-runner races in Ireland.”
Nicky Henderson, sitting alongside Nicholls, was not feeling so combative, saying of the Mullins battalion: “It is scary what they have in their armoury, just scary.” Invited to make a bet as to whether he or Nicholls would have the more winners, he joked: “We’re trying to take Mullins on between us. We’re not going to take each other on.”
Both men were frustrated to find that Cheltenham was being irrigated over the weekend, since any softening of the going would be more to Mullins’ benefit than theirs. “Willie’s not here tonight, he’s there with a gun to [the clerk of the course] Simon Claisse’s head, getting him to water,” Nicholls said.
Mullins presumably maintains a near-constant presence in the heads of other trainers in Ireland, where he dominates in both numbers and quality. He has already racked up €2.6m (£1.87m) in prize money this season, more than his nearest two rivals put together, and, from more than 400 runners he has somehow maintained a 36% win-rate, better than anyone who has had more than five runners.
It was not always this way, though the present state of affairs now appears to be entrenched, partly because Mullins is only 58 and his very sharp son Patrick is widely expected to take over one day. But back in 1988, when Mullins started up, things were not exactly handed to him on a platter.
Cheerily, he tells the story of how he gently pulled the wool over the eyes of a Turf Club inspector, sent to ensure that facilities were adequate. A licence could only be granted if the prospective trainer had at least six horses in his care. “We had only four legitimate ones. We had an old mare out in the field and another had been dead a few weeks. That made our six.”
His gallops amounted to one small ring. “Are your jumps down there, too?” asked the inspector. Somehow Mullins persuaded him to accept that the answer was yes, without actually checking.Well, thank heaven for the occasional inclination of authority figures to look the other way. We can now appreciate that refusing Mullins a licence on a technicality would have been on a par with turning down the chance to sign the Beatles, though, again, that was not immediately clear from results on the track.
His wife owned about half the horses in the yard at that stage and it was years before they won more than £100,000 in a single season. They kept things going by selling young horses who might one day do better. But when Willie rode one of his own horses to victory at the Festival in 1996, it was the trainer whose prospects were suddenly bright. A 16-year-old Ruby Walsh had his first ride for the yard the following season. The success story which is now regarded as fact began to seem possible.
Walsh once said that when he began working for Mullins, a bit of spare money would lead to an anxious discussion about whether a wheelbarrow was more necessary than an extra set of tack. Some might have assumed that life would be plain sailing for the ambitious son of Paddy Mullins, a 10-times champion trainer, responsible for perhaps the most memorable moment in Cheltenham history when Dawn Run won the 1986 Gold Cup.
But, if Mullins Jr was not gifted a 100‑horse yard, he got the family’s genes and any amount of advice from his father, who he has cited as the biggest influence on his career.
Others who have had some influence are Rich Ricci, Gigginstown Stud, JP McManus and Graham Wylie, the big-time owners who have gravitated towards Mullins over time, drawn by the chance to be part of a winning team. With such folk on his speed-dial, Mullins probably has more buying power than any jumps trainer in history.
But contrary to general assumption, he is not keen to hoover up every good prospect paraded in front of him. “He’s got a great eye for a horse, much like his father did,” Ricci told The Guardian. “He’s a great judge. He knows what he wants and he’s very disciplined about not moving from that.
“We often talk about buying horses and they look great on paper. But when he sees them and even if they’ve got the slightest thing, it doesn’t make them physically unable to pass the vet but they don’t meet to his eye … out. And there’s horses that I’ve turned down via Willie that have gone on to other owners who are friends of mine, who have maybe run once or twice and got hurt.”
On the subject of Mullins’s qualities, Ricci continued: “He doesn’t feel he has all the answers. He’s constantly asking questions. He answers a lot of questions from novices like me but when you see him interacting with other people in the game, he’s constantly asking questions, always wanting to learn, always wanting to improve. He’s not afraid to take criticism.”
“He’s always been a brilliant trainer,” Walsh said on Saturday. “He puts his horses in the right races, gets them very fit, keeps them healthy, pays attention to detail. And he’s his own boss. He knows how to use his gallops, he knows how to get horses fit, he knows his horses. He’s a very good man to ride for.” What’s his attitude when things go wrong? “Move on, next race.”
Mullins can, of course, afford to be mellow about the odd reverse but that sanguine approach to life seems so much a part of his character that it must surely have predated the glory years. While others fret over which Festival race would be most suitable for each of his many equine stars, the trainer is famed for leaving decisions until the last possible moment. Win or lose from Tuesday to Friday, he will doubtless be found at some stage this weekend in the bar of the Lord Bagenal hotel, his local, where many a big win has been toasted long into the night.
Only Cheltenham is a regular source of discomfort to him. “One time we used to hope to get a winner and be delighted when you get it,” he has said of the Festival. “Now, with the amount of horses that we have here, it’s a sort of dread that if you don’t get it …”
We should all have such worries.
Five to mull over
Mullins has 67 runners over the next four days at Cheltenham. Here are the five likely to make the headlines this week:
Douvan
Favourite for the Festival’s opening race, the Supreme Novice Hurdle. Mullins calls him: “One of the nicest horses we’ve taken there”
Un De Sceaux
Repeated brilliance has taken him to 11 wins from 12 and made him long odds-on for the Arkle Trophy, but will his jumping stand up on his first visit to Cheltenham?
Faugheen
Unbeaten in eight starts and no horse has finished within three lengths of him. Critics say he hasn’t been tested against the best. Stablemate and former champion Hurricane Fly takes him on
Annie Power
Another odds-on shot, for the Mares Hurdle on opening day, despite not having raced since May because of a setback. Second in the much stronger World Hurdle last year
Djakadam
A 10-1 wild card for the Gold Cup, having been 50-1 at the start of the year. Deeply impressive in an Irish handicap last time but won’t get the wet conditions he enjoyed there
