'It blew my mind': Kopek Des Bordes' Leopardstown performance astonished Willie Mullins
HUGE STATEMENT: Ted Walsh compared Kopek Des Bordes with Golden Cygnet, one of the greatest novices of all-time. Pic: Healy Racing
Kopek Des Bordes’ performance at the Dublin Racing Festival had legendary figure Ted Walsh rushing to make comparisons with Golden Cygnet, widely acknowledged as one of the greatest novices of all time.
Willie Mullins’ charge, who is owned by Charlie McCarthy, is very much a work in progress and despite his keen-going tendencies, produced a remarkable performance to race away with the Grade One Tattersalls Novice Hurdle on Sunday afternoon at Leopardstown.
That effort, which earned the winner a rating of 157, had Walsh likening him to the former 10-length winner of the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, whose career was cruelly cut short by a fall in the Scottish Champion Hurdle, where he was upside the two-time Champion Hurdler Night Nurse when suffering a fatal fall at the final flight.
“Ted Walsh rang me the following morning and said he hadn’t seen a performance like that since Golden Cygnet, which is something huge for someone like Ted to say,” revealed Mullins.
“It’s probably the first time he’s rung to say anything like that. Ted has a razor-sharp memory. There’s no grey in Ted’s vocabulary: it’s black or white. For him to come out and say something like that was a huge statement, I think.”
Adding his own recollection of the race, Mullins said: “It blew my mind, especially against a field of top-class horses.
“Paul (Townend) got off him after the race and told me he ran away with him three times in the race. Mostly, if a horse runs away once, their winning chance is gone. When the loose horse came up, I thought ‘this is going to drive this fella mad,’ which it did.
“He went on two or three lengths at the bend before the second-last hurdle, and Paul got a grip on him and away he went again. We would never ask a horse that question at home.”
Final Demand was another novice to make a huge impact at the weekend and while, in time, he is likely to develop into a top stayer, Mullins is keen to keep him to middle distances this season.
“The Albert Bartlett wouldn't be a race I’d want to go for with him,” admitted Mullins. “He’s only had two runs, and I’d like a horse who started earlier in the season for that one. I think it’s a tough race on horses for the rest of their career and I don’t think he needs that.
“I think two-miles-five on that track at Cheltenham in the Turners, up that hill, is tough on a horse and that would be a big enough question to ask him at this stage."
Mullins had no negatives to report regarding his three-time Irish Gold Cup winner Galopin Des Champs, who is on target to emulate the achievement in Cheltenham and, in the process, join Cottage Rake, Arkle, and Best Mate as three-time winners of that race.
“The Gold Cup is five weeks on Friday, and I’d love another week,” he admitted. “With those staying chasers you’d like a minimum of six weeks, but the race the other day was our Irish Gold Cup and to me if you have a horse good enough for it, you must respect the race and the meeting and go there.
"To us here it's unbelievable that we've got a horse that's going for a third Gold Cup and could be in the Best Mate/Arkle category.
"To be associated with a horse like this who is so well known now is a huge honour, for want of a better word. We're all delighted to be involved, and we just hope the dream stays alive.
"We've got five-plus weeks for that day to come and I'm not dreaming it will happen. If you think it's going to happen it probably won't, so I'm going in the opposite direction.
"If this horse can do what Arkle and Best Mate did, it's a once in a lifetime job, isn't it? I think there was 40 years between them, so we're maybe 20 years too soon.
"We had a go with Al Boum Photo, but he couldn't win the third. I think we've a bit more of a chance this year."
