Since day one of Cheltenham 2015 revolves around one man to an extent unprecedented through the festival’s long history, the secret of Willie Mullins’s success is the question on everyone’s lips. So who better to ask for an answer than his son, Patrick.
To be fair to the 25-year-old champion amateur jockey, he doesn’t just rattle off some stock answer, but considers the question carefully before responding, rather like a certain champion trainer in fact.
Different way of thinking
“He has a different way of thinking. I see him every day, watching a horse do something obvious like one plus one equals two: except the next day, the same obvious thing happens, you presume two, and my dad will say three. He has that ability to see things differently. I don’t know if that’s any good to you, though,”
Patrick Mullins
says almost apologetically.
Since that’s as persuasive a description of the near-telepathic mystery of horsemanship as you’re likely to get this week, it sounds pretty good indeed.
“He also has the ability to handle pressure and stress, and all the detail that goes into something like this,” Mullins adds. “What sets him apart is he’s able to deal with so many horses, and their owners.”
A trainer apart
Since the near-50-strong team from Closutton running at Cheltenham this week includes many of the best horses in training, and almost every top owner worth mentioning in the sport, Mullins senior really is a trainer apart from everyone else.
But another major factor of the most powerful stable in National Hunt racing is the human talent that the trainer has assembled, and his son is increasingly recognised as a vital cog in the operation.
It was Mullins junior who first got very excited indeed about Faugheen, and that was on the home gallop rather than when the Champion Hurdle favourite won his bumper less than two years ago. It was the same jockey who twigged Annie Power was exceptional after riding her for Jim Bolger.
Every morning it is his opinion of a horse that his father can rely on. There are others too, but none more central.
It has been so through the dazzling run of success enjoyed by Willie Mullins in the past decade. It is seven years since his son steered Cousin Vinny to Champion Bumper success. In 2012 Champagne Fever won the same race. A year later Back In Focus won the four-miler over fences.
The presumption everywhere is that the Maynooth University equine business studies graduate will ultimately train himself, continuing the dynasty began by the grandfather he’s named after. He loves the idea, but admits: “I don’t know if I’d love to train as many as my father does. It takes a very particular person to handle all that detail.”
Besides, being a champion jockey is something he relishes. Six-times champion, and holder of the record number of winners by an amateur in a year, he has another record in his sights before turning his thoughts to training.
"Ted Walsh has 11 amateur titles and I'd like to better that. So that gives me another five or six years anyway," he says.
As an amateur, he doesn’t have to make ultra-light weights, but the casually expressed ambition comes with automatic sacrifices.
Mullins played rugby for Clongowes College until third year, and not as a nippy scrumhalf but as a full-back. He stopped when his teammates started doing weights – “I didn’t want to get heavy – and I wasn’t very good at tackling.”
Mullins going for a run to try and shed some weight before the final bumper is a regular sight during racing though.
“Waking up 11.5 or 11.6 isn’t particularly difficult, although I wouldn’t be eating Chinese and drinking pints,” he says. “But it’s not a chore because I’m riding these good horses. Other fellas do a lot more than I do. And I’d like to do it as long as I can.”
An enviable book of rides this week begins with Perfect Gentleman in today’s National Hunt Chase. It’s a list to keep thoughts of training himself still in the future.
Legends of the sport
With such a lineage though comes automatic pressure: how to compete with legends of the sport such as your father and grandfather. Typically, he fronts up to the question of whether or not it might be a burden.
“It’s a huge plus. Anything I’ve achieved is down to my father and mother, and back to my grandfather. I’m certainly lucky my father is on the run he is now. I certainly wouldn’t swap it,” he says. “Sure there might be a bit of pressure, but I’ll try to top them anyway. I don’t think they’ve won a Derby.”
