It’s Willie Mullins’s Cheltenham and everyone else is just living in it after jump racing’s dominant figure secured a once inconceivable 100th festival success on Wednesday.
Jasmin De Vaux, appropriately ridden by Mullins’s son Patrick, pulled off the monumental landmark in the concluding Weatherbys Champion Bumper.
In gathering gloom, it was apt too that the momentous event was a 13th victory for Mullins Senior in the festival race he has farmed like no other since his first ever win as a trainer with Tourist Attraction in 1995.
Back then Mullins admitted to disbelief at ending up in the winner’s enclosure at Cheltenham at all. Now everyone else is left dumbfounded at how the 67-year-old Irishman has transformed jump racing and particularly its greatest meeting.
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What once beggared belief has become routine. Jasmin De Vaux completed a Grade One hat-trick on the day which had begun with spectacular victories for Ballyburn and Fact To File. It followed a similar Grade One hat-trick on Tuesday. At such a rate, 2022′s record haul of 10 winners in a single week will be old news.
If the festival is a very different beast to the days of legendary names such as Vincent O’Brien and Tom Dreaper, particularly with a fourth day added in 2005, the reach of Mullins’s ambition has changed the sport forever.
There is an overarching remorselessness to it that Mullins made light of El Fabiolo fluffing his lines in the Champion Chase: 90 minutes later the same ownership colours of Simon Munir and Isaac Souede wound up in the spotlight on board Jasmin De Vaux, one of Mullins’s nine runners in the race.
“Without owners I wouldn’t be here, none of us would, it’s their sport. I was really pleased that Patrick was the one to do it because I wasn’t sure he was on the right one, but he was spot on and I was wrong.
“I’m just delighted, I wouldn’t say emotional. When I started out I didn’t think anyone would ever train 100 Cheltenham winners and I certainly didn’t think it would be me. [But] people were saying I should have done it last year!” Mullins laughed.
Significantly, it’s a century that in cricket parlance is very much not out, judging by the depth of emerging talent Mullins has.
Ballyburn’s reputation as his outstanding youngster over flights got rubber-stamped with aplomb as the 1-2 favourite romped away with the Gallagher Novice Hurdle, leaving the racing world apparently at his feet.
Fact To File’s feet are already skipping over fences and he looks a prime Gold Cup contender for 2025 after becoming a fourth Mullins=trained odds-on Grade One winner this week in the Brown Advisory.
If, from the outside, circumstances verged on the farcical in how Mullins saddled five of the seven runners in the opener – filling the first five places – it was significant from his own inside perspective that he was so impressed with Ballyburn’s display.
“I know how good our others are. They would be top-class horses any other year and they deserve to be here,” he said.
“This was the first time he has wowed me. For Paul [Townend] to take a look around turning for home – that must have been the feel the horse was giving him.
“This fellow could be anything. He could be a Champion Hurdle horse, a Gold Cup horse or both, with his size, scope and pedigree. He’s made for fences but looks to have the ability for a Champion Hurdle,” Mullins considered.
The result echoed Michael Dickinson’s historic first five home in the 1983 Gold Cup and Mullins admitted: “It was extraordinary to look at a man having so much firepower in one stable and now it looks like we’re in the same position.”
It’s why JP McManus has long since joined Mullins’s ownership ranks, although Fact To File looks an exceptional prospect by any measure.
Not many of McManus’s own previous 74 festival winners won with such stylish authority and oozed potential Blue Riband quality.
“It was a Gold Cup performance potentially, but he’s been like that since the day he came into the yard,” the trainer said. “He’s just a real gentleman of a horse, and definitely a Gold Cup horse in the making.”
Considering he has a certain Gold Cup champion in Galopin Des Champs in his possession, Mullins was quickly straightforward about next season. “You know the plan. He could start off in the John Durkan, then run at Christmas, then the Dublin Racing Festival and back here. That’s the bones of the plan, but he has to stay right.”
Throw in how Jasmin De Vaux looks an exceptional prospect too and it really is a case of 100 and counting.
Wednesday’s programme was reduced to six races after the Cross-Country was abandoned due to waterlogging, but brothers Dan and Harry Skelton kept the home flag flying to some extent with a 51-1 double. Langer Dan landed back-to-back Coral Cups while Unexpected Party emerged on top in the Grand Annual.
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