Willie Mullins likened his spectacular 9,802-1 six-timer on Day Two of the Punchestown festival to "fantasy racing" and it looks like having put the trainers' championship battle to bed.
It was a first ever six-timer for the legendary figure who is now a 1-10 favourite to beat his great rival Gordon Elliott to the championship when the season ends on Saturday.
It was benchmark day for Mullins all-round as he passed both the €5 million prize-money mark and also 200 winners for the season for the first time in an afternoon topped by Bellshill’s defeat of his stable companion Djakadam in the Coral Gold Cup.
“It’s been an extraordinary day, like fantasy racing. I came here hoping for a winner or two to keep in touch [with Elliott]. But Punchestown has always been very good to us,” he said.
Elliott’s rapidly fading hopes of retrieving the situation could centre on his star youngster Samcro who steps out of novice class for the first time in Friday’s Champion Hurdle.
But having been odds-on for a first championship just a couple of days ago – and over half a million euro clear – Elliott has seem his advantage swept away. Mullins now leads by €48,161 after winning €500,625 on Wednesday.
That it should have happened despite Elliott's saddling a 1-2-3 in a pair of €100,000 races on Tuesday testifies to how Mullins has exceeded even normal Punchestown Festival service.
He now has had nine individual winners in just two days, more than halfway to his 2015 haul of 16.
Mullins's return to centre-stage was so decisive it even elbowed his jockey Paul Townend to the side, precisely what the beleaguered rider would have wanted.
After his spectacular “brain-freeze” aboard Al Boum Photo on Tuesday, Townend exhibited the three ‘Rs’ of resilience, resolve and redemption to such an extent his declaration that “this is behind us now” looked on the money in a his own 54-1 treble.
Townend was superb on Next Destination who justified 5-4 favouritism in an epic finish with Delta Work and Kilbricken Storm for the Mirror Novice Hurdle.
Later he got the rub of the green so dramatically lacking 24 hours earlier when, in the handicap chase, Patrick’s Park got the better of Blast Of Koeman whose rider, Philip Enright, lost his irons after a mistake at the last.
But it was the earlier victory on Pravalaguna which provoked perhaps the biggest and most heartfelt applause of the day. Considering the attention Townend’s controversial ride on Al Boum Photo attracted, its significance was not lost on the rider.
“I appreciate it. Yesterday is yesterday and I’ll put it behind me now,” he said.
Mullins said afterwards Townend was in at work “good and early” that morning and added his victories “show the mettle of the man in the circumstances. He’s been cool under pressure.”
In the circumstances no one can have been happier to concede the spotlight, even if he had a say in the matter considering Mullins’s extraordinary dominance of a top-class Festival day.
Mullins did continue to play the straightest of straight bats to championship queries – “I don’t want to talk about that!” – but after Tornado Flyer led home a stable 1-2-3 in the Racing Post Champion Bumper he did concede: “Today would have to surpass expectations!”
Mullins ’s son Patrick sealed the six-timer on Colreevy, but if the emergence of a horse that could ultimately provide the trainer with an elusive Cheltenham Gold Cup victory had to fit into the overall Mullins narrative then Colreevy had no chance.
Bellshill ruined his Irish Grand National chance at Easter with a wayward jump at the last that ultimately saw him demoted from fourth to fifth by the stewards. However he bounced back from that gruelling race to win the big race in style under David Mullins.
He was given 20-1 quotes for next year’s blue riband at Cheltenham and Mullins was in no mood to downplay such expectations. But it was the Irish National, and Wednesday’s dismissed appeal against Bellshill’s demotion that was still exercising Willie Mullins’s attention.
“I was amazed he was disqualified and couldn’t get over that it wasn’t overturned. I’ve never seen a horse make a mistake at a fence and be disqualified when it was no fault of the rider.
“There are countless examples of it in Irish racing and I think the decision opens a huge can of worms,” he said.
Even on a day of days, the instinct to look ahead was still intact.
