Italian job was just what Mullins needed at end of hectic campaign

With his head “fried”, a well-earned sunshine break was just the ticket at the end of what was a remarkable season for Willie Mullins, who is already plotting the best route back to the Randox Grand National with Nick Rockett.

The Closutton handler has achieved just about everything the National Hunt game has to offer over the course of his illustrious career, but even he was reduced to tears after his record-breaking amateur rider son Patrick passed the post in front in the world’s most famous steeplechase in April.

With a second successive British trainers’ championship to fight for during the remaining weeks of the season there was little time for Mullins to enjoy his third National success, but he did belatedly take two weeks out in southern Italy to gather his thoughts.

Six months on at an Aintree press morning at his yard on Wednesday, Mullins said: “I was fairly drained by the last day of the season! At that particular time of the year we were trying to organise Sandown runners and other runners in England. We had entries everywhere and people were coming at me with different ideas – we ended up going to Plumpton with Absurde.

“Then on top of that for me was buying horses for this year and next year. That was all going along, which other people wouldn’t see, and my head was sort of fried between the racing and trying to keep an eye on the horses that were coming up for sale.

“When we finally got all the horses out to grass for the summer, my head was fried by that stage and I didn’t want to see a horse for a couple of weeks! I went off and laid out in the sun.

“We’re all pinching ourselves. We were two years down the road and we’d won two British championships, two Grand Nationals and whatever we did in Cheltenham and everything else. We find it extraordinary to see what has just happened.”

On potentially becoming the first trainer since Vincent O’Brien 50 years ago to win three Grand Nationals in a row, Mullins added: “That would be huge. I’ll just be trying to prepare them to get there and after that you need all that luck.

“It takes a bit of planning, trying to identify the horses at this time of year that might progress enough to get there, plus trying to keep the two that have already won it right.”

Looking back on the race, Mullins further reflected on what he described as the “biggest thrill” he has ever had in racing: “I was just looking at Patrick the whole way from the Canal Turn. I said ‘this could happen’ and I was thinking my mother is not here to see it and my father is not here to see it, all the people that you want to be there.

“I looked at our other four or five horses in the race and then went back to Patrick and he was still cantering, but you never think it’s going to happen because so many things happen in the National. A few years earlier Patrick was cantering on Burrows Saint and he got to the second-last and he didn’t stay – the horse just emptied out underneath him and I was waiting for something like that to happen or a horse to fall in front of him or for him to make a mistake.

“I was so taken in with the whole thing, I’d say it was sinking in as it was happening actually and it is probably the biggest thrill I ever got in racing. I had my first winner in Cheltenham, first Champion Hurdle, first Gold Cup and first Grand National and all those things, but this one probably superseded the whole lot.”

As if training a Grand National winner ridden by your son was not enough, Mullins also saddled five of the first seven home, with the previous year’s National hero I Am Maximus filling the runner-up spot and Grangeclare West a close-up third and all three look set to return to Aintree next spring.

Mullins has previously raised the possibility of Nick Rockett being targeted at the Cheltenham Gold Cup, but said: “The more I think about it the more I think it’s probably a good idea to head back to Aintree with a horse that really showed he handled the track and he’s going to have not much more weight I imagine.

“His owner Stewart Andrew has been discussing Gold Cup entries with me, so that’s in his head, but when I look at the Gold Cup horses that are around he might have as good a chance in the Grand National.

“Last year he went to Leopardstown at Christmas, the Thyestes, the Bobbyjo and Aintree. I’ll be trying to get a run into him before Christmas this season and we’ll follow a similar route I think.

“I’d imagine I Am Maximus will go back to the National as well. I know JP (McManus) is very fond of the National, he loves to have horses for it and he has a couple of Gold Cup horses already.”

In theory Mullins could train Nick Rockett for both major prizes, of course, but he feels a Grand National contender needs a special kind of preparation.

He said: “With a Gold Cup horse you can run in the top races and win good prize-money, like Galopin Des Champs, but Grand National horses are different as you more or less have to mind them for the whole season and then you could fall at the last or even the first.

“You do need that quality and it’s nice to have a horse on the way up. I’m hoping Spanish Harlem might be a horse in that bracket this season. He just seems to have come right for me – he’s been here two years and it’s the first time I’ve been happy with him.”