Willie Mullins: Success didn’t ‘land here from the planet Mars’ 

TOP TEAM: The scene on the gallops ahead of The Cheltenham Festival with trainer Willie Mullins' team of horses. Pic: Healy Racing

For a man who endured a challenging weekend, Willie Mullins cut a surprisingly cheery figure as he greeted members of the press at his Closutton base on Monday.

The big newsline was delivered quickly: Dual Ryanair Chase hero Allaho won’t be part of his 2023 Cheltenham Festival battalion after suffering an abdominal bleed on Saturday.

“He worked very well on Saturday,” Mullins revealed. “Came back, dried off, put him into his box, fed him his lunch, and after lunch we found him a little bit distressed. We thought he was getting a colic, but it didn’t look colic – it was something else.

“We just brought him straight down to Fethard Equine Hospital and found he’d got a bleed in his abdomen. It’s hugely unusual – I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in a horse before.

“He was comfortable over the weekend but was still critical, but this morning he moved off the critical list. His bloods and everything had come down to normal levels.

“I got good word from the veterinary hospital this morning but, unfortunately, he won’t make Cheltenham, and I’d imagine that’s him for the season because we don’t know what caused the bleed.

“There’s no fracture or anything, but something caused it, and that’s going to take a while to heal. Hopefully he will make a full recovery and be back for next season. You get all sorts of injuries and other things but that’s very unusual for us.” 

Losing a horse of the calibre of Allaho would be a hammer blow for any stable but Mullins is better equipped to cope than just about any jumps trainer in history.

Even with Allaho out of the equation, Mullins still trains 12 ante-post Cheltenham Festival favourites. He began this month by winning six of the eight Grade Ones up for grabs at the Dublin Racing Festival for the third year on the trot.

It’s brilliant for Mullins but some have questioned whether one man being so dominant is a good thing for the overall health of the sport.

Mullins appreciates his good fortune but points out that he hasn’t got to where he is now without putting in the heavy lifting.

“I’m more than delighted to be in the position we’re in,” Mullins said. “I never dreamt it, who could have dreamt that that could happen?

“We pinch ourselves every night we go out to the yard to check the horses, with the type of stuff that’s there, but it didn’t arrive in here on a parachute. It took years and years of work and wondering why we hadn’t horses like that.

“I remember when the Vincent O’Brien Gold Cup, at Leopardstown, was invented, and wondering would we ever have a horse good enough to run in it, never mind win it. So, we put in plenty of years when we were looking up at the guys up there thinking would we ever have horses like that.

“We were lucky we got a team together — and it’s from staff to owners — and it wasn’t as if it just landed here from the planet Mars. It was a lot of hard work, a lot of disappointment — as we say in racing, it’s 90% disappointment.

“I was thinking about it the other night, thinking it’s a lot of hard work to get there, from all our staff, and the owners as well. They get a lot of disappointment. Having to ring guys up and tell them their horse is out for the season … it’s their one pride and joy, and they’re looking forward to Cheltenham for four years from the time they bought the horse, and then having to ring them up and tell them ‘we’re out’ … 

“The good part of that conversation might be that we’ll be back next year, but more of them I’ll have to ring them up and say the horse is finished racing, that you’ll have to retire him because his injury is too bad.

“There’s a lot of stuff that goes on that people who make comments like that don’t understand. I know it’s going back to any team in any sport, it takes years and years to build, so we’re lucky we’re in the position we’re in. We’re always wondering when is it going to go down, and that’s why you have to keep trying to make it better.” 

Asked if the wheel ever stops, Manchester United fan Mullins couldn’t resist a dig at bitter rivals Liverpool.

“If it stops, I’m in trouble. Look at Liverpool, they stopped buying, didn’t they? You’ve got to look forward all the time, not look back. You’ve got to look forward to next year, the year after, and that’s what I try and do.” 

Somewhat surprisingly, Mullins, who will send a team of around 60 horses to Cheltenham, has mixed views on the rise of super stables like his and Gordon Elliott’s.

“When I started training, if someone said to me: I’ll give you a yard of 60 horses for the rest of your life, you’d snap it up straight away. I never dreamt that yards would be this big, ourselves and Gordon, and I don’t particularly want a yard this big, but when the opposition goes big, you have to stay with them to complete. That’s how it has grown the way it has grown.” 

Against that, he fully appreciates his good fortune to train in this era.

“I’m lucky that I was born in this time. I was only thinking about it the other day, my father was a brilliant trainer, I thought, but the opportunity wasn’t there for people like him and Tom Dreaper, another brilliant trainer. They only trained a handful of horses because there wasn’t the opportunity, there wasn’t the prizemoney. I just hit on the right time.” 

However, things don’t run smoothly all the time. The Dublin Racing Festival brought frustration as well as joy with Facile Vega and the luckless Lossiemouth going down to less-fancied stablemates. Mullins is confident there’s sufficient time to get them back on track for Cheltenham.

“I hope Lossiemouth didn’t have too hard a race for a four-year-old filly. She’s very level-headed and I think she’ll be alright, and we have enough time.

“Facile Vega is by Walk In The Park and things mightn’t be as simple with him, but Paul (Townend) was easy on him when his chance was gone. I think he still has the ability, we just have to ride different tactics. There’ll be plenty of pace in that race, so Paul won’t be worried about having a dodgy jumper in front of him. When you go back to where he came from in the Bumper, I see no problem dropping him in.” 

Mullins was unusually critical of some of Townend’s decisions at the Dublin Racing Festival but says tactical discussions during Cheltenham will be kept short.

“It’ll be a two-minute conversation. I know Paul will have a lot of work done on it and he’ll tell me what he thinks and why and I’ll either agree or disagree with him. It’s very hard to disagree sometimes because then I find that you don’t get his ride and you don’t get my ride. It goes somewhere in between because sometimes jockeys have things in their heads and it’s very hard to dissuade them. If you’re not pulling the same way as your jockey — and vice versa — you don’t get the right thing at all.” 

Asked if the Gold Cup is still the Festival race he craves most, Mullins replied: “I gave up on winning the Gold Cup years ago and then I won it twice. I don’t think about things like that. Obviously Facile, Galopin (Des Champs), State Man are going to be on my mind. They’re the top three, I think, and then you’d have Lossiemouth and El Fabiolo. Over half of those are going to be beaten, so it would be great to get some big ones if we could.” 

One suspects he’ll do that and more.