Willie Mullins on Appreciate It: 'I never envisaged him as a Champion Hurdle Horse'

Being compared to his illustrious stablemate Vautour, who won this race and subsequently added two more Cheltenham Festival successes, is a feather in the cap of the seven-year-old

Appreciate It and Paul Townend after win for owner Michael Masterson and trainer Willie Mullins. Picture: Healy Racing

A Vautour-like performance left trainer Willie Mullins with a Faugheen-like quandary when Appreciate It routed the opposition in the Grade 1 Sky Bet Supreme Novices’ Hurdle.

In the race which gave him his breakthrough Festival success as a trainer, with Tourist Attraction all the way back in 1995, this was a seventh win in the race for Mullins and a first for jockey Paul Townend.