Willie Mullins enjoying training 'more now than ever'

Currently, the stable is responsible for 12 favourites in the ante-post lists for the Cheltenham Festival

WATCHING BRIEF: Willie Mullins on the gallops at his Closutton base on Monday.  Picture: Lorraine O'Sullivan/PA 

The dust has not yet settled on the Dublin Racing Festival and already Willie Mullins’ mind has honed-in on next month’s invasion of Cheltenham. Symptomatic of the current programme of horse racing, there is no time to rest on the laurels, but the 66-year-old admits he is enjoying the challenge as much now as ever he did.

"I'm surprised at how much fun I get out of it compared to what I thought I would,” he admitted. “It's just a different aspect of your life and I have to say I'm amazed at how much fun I get out of training now. I have fantastic clients who enjoy racing and because they enjoy it, I enjoy it. My whole team here makes my job very easy.

"I think I'm enjoying it more now than ever. Even though the stress levels are very high going to the big meetings, especially the way we set up our year. We don't jump from the traps. We like to take it easy early on and have the horses right for the big spring festivals. But that's the way we do it.” 

State Man was one of the stars of the weekend action in Leopardstown but Mullins, while confident in his own charge’s ability, both proven and yet to come, is acutely aware of what might face him when the Irish Champion Hurdle hero bids to follow up in Cheltenham.

“If you beat Honeysuckle around Leopardstown, you’d be thinking there’s only one more step to go, but Constitution Hill is there, and a few more too, and we’ve got to get there.

“Constitution Hill could be a bit of a freak and maybe he’s going to be unlucky to come up against a horse like that, but it’s all there to play for at the moment. We’re living the dream, anyway, at the moment.

“Everything he’s been showing me all along — and we’re seeing that there’s still improvement to come in him — makes us think he’s good enough.

"But there is no give when you go over there. That's what makes it so special and that's what makes it so hard to win there. You don't go over there thinking you're going to have six, seven, or ten winners or anything like that. I'm always amazed how tough the competition is every year.

“I enjoy Cheltenham for what it is, but I don’t enjoy the anxiety. When you’re looking after the team we bring over — and we’re going to have lots of disappointments, and hopefully we have winners to counteract that — it’s hard for me to enjoy. But the week after that we might enjoy if it’s been successful. If it’s not, we just have to suck it up, come home, and prepare for the following year.

“I hope we didn’t use all our luck at the Dublin Racing Festival. We’ve had a very good weekend, so the prep for Cheltenham is good.” 

Luck, good and bad, may well play its part but Mullins suggests the team could be the best he’s ever had to send over, and another of those young stars is Irish Gold Cup winner Galopin Des Champs.

Winner of a handicap at the 2021 Festival and desperately unlucky to fall at the last when clear in the Turners Novices' Chase in 2022, he carries the stable’s main hope of a third Cheltenham Gold Cup, and there is plenty of optimism in the camp.

“He did everything right,” said Mullins, of his Irish Gold Cup win. “I was very happy with what he did, and Paul was very happy that he settled and jumped, and he came through when he wanted him to. He was very happy he had plenty of horse under him passing through the line, and that’s important because there’s another two furlongs in Cheltenham.

“When he won over three miles as a novice, over hurdles, I would never worry about his stamina after that. It’s just about temperament. The horse has to settle in a race, and he’s done that in his last two runs, and Paul is much happier with him, and has confidence in him that he will settle and can use him in a race when he wants to use him, and that the horse is becoming the complete package.” 

Currently, the stable is responsible for 12 favourites in the ante-post lists for Cheltenham and, curiously, were he to have that many winners at the meeting, it would bring the nine-time leading trainer at the Festival to a staggering 100 successes.

That in mind, there is no better job in the weighroom than being stable jockey in Closutton but, as Paul Townend received a reminder this weekend, with the ups must come the downs.

On the other side of riding the winners of the Gold Cup, Champion Hurdle, and a €150,000 handicap hurdle, he was out of luck aboard Lossiemouth, who found trouble in the Juvenile Hurdle, and got into an early battle aboard the previously unbeaten Facile Vega.

But that is part and parcel of the job, and Mullins is confident lessons were learned and mistakes will not be repeated.

Specific to Facile Vega getting embroiled in the early battle with High Definition in the Grade One novice hurdle, he commented: “To me it was just a tactic that went wrong. I could have stopped it, but I said 'No, it's Paul's decision'. We found out something that will probably help us win races down the road.

“I let Paul do what he wants to do and that's the way we normally work things. I was disappointed to be beaten, but it's not a condemnation of Paul's riding ability, it's just a decision he made on the day, and it didn't work out. That's it. That's part of the job.

“I didn't go to bed on Sunday night thinking 'there's no way this can happen again' or anything like that. It just happened and we move onto the next race and try to get the tactics right the next time.

“It's like a player making a bad decision during a football match. That’s all it is. The play moves on. Paul gets things right 99% of the time.

“I was a bit bemused, but Paul couldn't change it. Going to the second hurdle, he couldn't pull the horse back. At Christmas, he locked on with him and it took him. He was able to run away down the back and still win at Christmas. A lot of horses would have curled up that day, but he didn't. We will change tactics on him the next day and he will be fine. He just went too fast.

“I think Paul didn’t want happening what happened to Lossiemouth the day before. He didn’t want to get stuck behind a horse that is a dodgy jumper. He had that in his head and possibly if the races were the other way around, he wouldn't have ridden Facile Vega the way he did. You have to factor all those things in, what's going through a jockey's mind. I think that's what happened.” 

Fortunately, and as Mullins is well aware, Townend has the mental fortitude to put that behind him. He showed so by winning the Champion Hurdle aboard State Man and the handicap aboard Gaelic Warrior, and by the time the tapes go up for the Supreme Novices Hurdle on Tuesday, March 14, those defeats will be a dim and distant memory.

Will Townend enjoy a Facile success in the Supreme, though? One firm offers 5-1 — inconceivable just 48 hours ago. And, lest we not be clear about it, Willie Mullins wouldn’t put you off taking those odds.