To no one’s surprise, Willie Mullins started Punchestown 2023 as he means to continue and his inexorable progress to festival domination began on Tuesday with a 160-1 four-timer.
Such a flying start means jump racing’s dominant figure is on course to break his own festival record set in 2021, when he won 19 of the 40 races up for grabs.
In front of an opening day attendance of 14,937 – up 345 on last year – Mullins secured a pair of Grade One victories through Energumene in the featured William Hill Champion Chase and Facile Vega in the KPMG Champion Novice Hurdle.
With a one-two-three headed by Bialystok in a handicap hurdle. and Predators Gold beating his stable companion Milo Lises in the Goffs Bumper, it was all very much business as usual.
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Or at least it was until the Grade One Dooley Group Champion Novice Chase when it took Emmet Mullins to interrupt his uncle’s remorseless progress.
Journey With Me’s fall at the 12th fence left the Grand National-winning trainer’s Feronily with a quartet of Mullins contenders bearing down on him.
Any sense of inevitability about the outcome was off the mark, however, as the horse who’d made his chasing debut just a fortnight earlier wasn’t for passing and paid off in spades his trainer’s plucky race planning.
It was a maiden Grade One for 32-year-old Mullins, who is based next door to his uncle and hit the spotlight with Noble Yeats landing last season’s Grand National.
Feronily’s Cork debut over fences was in open company where he finished runner-up to Bachason. It was an unusual route to Grade One level but underlined his trainer’s capacity to ignore convention.
“He’s a top-class horse: his second start over fences, to go out in front and do a jumping performance like that. This was always going to be his deal and why waste time knocking around for another year over hurdles – get on and do the business,” Emmet Mullins said.
Feronily’s rider, Donagh Meyler, perhaps summed it up best after breaking his own duck at Grade One level: “You’d be a foolish man to second guess Emmet Mullins!”
It was an unexpected bump in the Grade One road for Willie Mullins who saddled 11 of the 16 Grade One runners (69 per cent) that lined up on Tuesday.
Otherwise, it felt almost like another day at the festival office for the 66-year-old who will be crowned champion trainer for a 17th time on Saturday and could wind up landing more than half of this week’s races.
If anything, Mullins’s remorseless drive appears to be intensifying, a point underlined by the depth of his team at all levels.
Perhaps only Mullins could find himself at the business end of a Grade One highlight with a 2-7 favourite apparently in trouble and yet secure in the knowledge victory was in the bag.
With the sole non-Mullins runner in the race having long since given up the ghost, the trio of Chacun Pour Soi, Gentleman De Mee and Blue Lord ranged around a struggling Energumene in the straight.
Having looked a busted flush for much of the season, the 2021 winner Chacun Pour Soi briefly looked like securing an unlikely last hurrah with a flying leap at the last.
A number of jumping errors, including a shuddering mistake four out, had put Energumene into a hole sharply at odds with his ‘SP’ but with fences out of the way he admirably dug his way out of it.
It was hardly a performance to excite public affection – and on the back of it his price about a Queen Mother Champion Chase hat-trick next season extended to 3/1 – but it meant Energumene completed the rare feat of a Cheltenham-Punchestown festival double for a second year.
“I think he’s the best two-miler around and the fact he was able to do things wrong today and still win probably shows that he’s a very good horse,” Paul Townend said.
For his part, Mullins was moved to once again praise his No 1 jockey’s capacity to make the difference.
“Paul really pulled that race out of the fire and that’s the difference between a good jockey and a great jockey,” he said. “You can probably see the end of the season getting to him [Energumene].”
Facile Vega threw in a dramatic blunder of his own at the third last but it didn’t prevent the 4-6 favourite from comfortably beating his stable companion II Etait Temps.
Both Mullins and Townend are convinced Facile Vega’s habit of making a mistake will change when faced with fences.
“Hurdles are in his way!” grinned the rider afterwards, while Mullins immediately confirmed a school over the bigger obstacles will take place next week before the giant son of Quevega goes on his holidays.
“I’d say the sooner we go chasing the better,” he said. “I’ve always thought the world of him and think he has huge ability. Paul thinks he doesn’t have much respect for hurdles, that he could always do that type of thing, even schooling at home.”
Bookmakers immediately installed Facile Vega as low as 5-1 for next season’s Arkle at Cheltenham but Mullins was at pains to stress his faith in the horse’s stamina.
Day one wound up with a winning coincidence bet for boxing fans as the horse named after Muhammad Ali’s coach, Angelo Dundee, landed the bumper at 11-1 for trainer Dermot McLoughlin.
