Having reached 100 festival winners earlier in the week, Willie Mullins began the march towards perhaps a double-century in resounding style at Cheltenham on Friday.
With an 11th leading trainer award wrapped up after hat-tricks on both Tuesday and Wednesday, Mullins turned the 2024 festival’s final programme day into a resounding expression of superiority with another three-timer.
The highlight was Galopin Des Champs winning a second Gold Cup but he was backed up by both Majborough in the Triumph Hurdle and Absurde in the County Hurdle.
It left his tally for the week only one behind his 2022 record of 10 and equaled the entire British team this week.
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Talk of a double century might be flippant right now but even at 67, the Irishman’s ambition gives every impression of accelerating rather than slowing down, and every journey does begin with a first step.
That initial step to number 101 came with Majborough’s gutsy defeat of stable companion Kargese in the JCB Triumph Hurdle.
The strapping JP McManus-owned horse was the trainer’s idea of his best chance from a seven-strong team for the juvenile championship and the only surprise to Mullins was Majborough’s starting price.
“I’m surprised at his price - 6/1 - I picked him to be favourite,” said Mullins. “He’s a chaser, isn’t he? When he came into the yard and they said he was our Triumph Hurdle horse, I said I thought he was a Gold Cup horse, a three-mile chaser. He’s very trained at the moment, a bit angular, like all the French horses. But when he comes in from a summer’s grass, he will be some beast.”
Heavy ground conditions meant Mullins dismissed Absurde’s County Hurdle chance outright beforehand, a not unreasonable conclusion for an Ebor winner on the flat who spent November rattling around Flemington in the Melbourne Cup.
Ultimately, the mud proved no barrier as Paul Townend delivered the chilliest of cool rides to deliver Absurde from last to first and nail the 7-2 English favourite L’eau Du Sud inside the final 100 metres.
“What a rider that man is. There can’t be one bit of warm blood in his veins - it’s all cold I’d say. To ride it the way he rode it - to me that’s the ride of the week,” exclaimed Mullins.
If Mullins’ favourite Dinoblue came up just short of Limerick Lace in the Mares Chase, it didn’t matter to owner JP McManus, successful earlier with Majborough, who enjoyed his fifth winner of the week. Keith Donoghue did the steering on Gavin Cromwell’s second winner of the festival.
It proved a landmark day for Co Antrim rider Sam Ewing who got the Gordon Elliott trained 33-1 outsider Stellar Story up in the final stride of the Albert Bartlett Hurdle to beat a gallant front running The Jukebox Man.
Successful in Thursday’s Stayers with Tehupoo, Elliott admitted his latest Grade One winner was a very late addition to the Cheltenham squad. It paid off, though, and gave an opportunity for Stellar Story’s owner Michael O’Leary to visit the winners enclosure for the first time.
“I was 90 per cent [sure] I’d got it but I had to look at the screen to be 100 per cent!” said Ewing whose father Warren prepared Constitution Hill in point to points before being sold to Nicky Henderson.
Elliott doubled up on the day as Better Days Ahead got the better of a three-pronged Irish battle for the concluding Martin Pipe Conditional Hurdle. It was also a first festival success for jockey Danny Gilligan.
Derek O’Connor came within three parts of a length of a historic hat-trick in the week’s three amateur prizes when Its On The Line failed to repel the late thrust of the sole English winner on the day, Sine Nomine.
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