Big race treble very much within reach for Willie Mullins

The clock is ticking to next week’s Cheltenham Festival with all eyes looking towards what should be another bonanza of a week for Willie Mullins.

The Kilkennyman is already the most successful trainer in the meeting’s history and, in the next few days, he could remarkably pass the century mark in terms of winners.

Mullins currently sits on 94 victories with Galopin De Champs’ Gold Cup success in 2023 being his last while his first arrived a mere 28 years earlier in 1995 when Tourist Attraction won the festival opening Supreme Novice Hurdle.

It’s only two years ago that the Closutton handler trained a magnificent 10 winners from the 28 races on offer so reaching the 100 milestone by the end of next week is far from just a pipe dream.

While it’s not something Mullins gets too bogged down by, it’s something that could become a big talking point over the course of the Festival.

“It’s not something I think anyone in racing ever thought of so I don’t know,” he said. “People talked about it last year and thought I might go by that mark last year, but often getting to that mark can be very hard. We’ve gone one or two days without a winner at Cheltenham and no one is gifted winners at Cheltenham.

“It’s only when you go back every year – you sort of forget how hard it is to win there. Everyone is so hyped up when you get to Cheltenham so we don’t go there expecting to win - we hope to win, I always say.”

As it stands, Mullins has favourites for over half of the races at the meeting and with the big UK hope Constitution Hill now ruled out of the Champion Hurdle, the market leaders for the three big races of the week are all stabled at Closutton in El Fabiolo (Champion Chase), State Man (Champion Hurdle) and Galopin Des Champs (Gold Cup).

Mullins is well used to huge success and you no need look any further than the Dublin Racing Festival last month where he won all eight Grade 1 contests on offer, but winning the three big ones like Henry De Bromhead did in 2021 would be quite the achievement.

There’s a lot of pressure on Mullins over these four days but he knows what a privileged position he’s in.

“We went into Christmas this year with no winner at Leopardstown on the first day with a lot of fancied horses and you’re coming home thinking ‘ah’. And that could happen, that you just have a blowout for some reason. You might have something, which we did actually last Christmas,” he added.

“We had a bad batch of straw which wasn’t right but we got that out of the way. So something externally can happen outside of your knowledge. They’re the things you worry about and you’re looking all the time to see what’s different, what’s going wrong, and hopefully the team are as well. That’s my big fear.

“Once the race meeting starts and we get a winner it settles everyone’s nerves, I think. But it’s not turning up and expecting winners – at least I don’t turn up expecting winners.”

As well as his big hitters in the championship races, Mullins also has a hugely talented crop of youngsters in some of the Novice and Mare contests that include the likes of Ballyburn, Lossiemouth, Fact to File and Dinoblue who will all have a favourite’s chance.

Energumene, Ferny Hollow and Allaho are some of the star names where injury has ruled them out but overall all eyes will be on a Mullins battalion that will send over 60 horses to the Cotswolds in the next few days as the Kilkenny champion trainer looks to continue his recent domination of the sport.

“I couldn’t be happier,” he said. “We have some fantastic horses going over, from the stars like Galopin Des Champs the whole way through to horses in the different types of races down to the Bumper and we’re strong in most divisions.

“I think it’ll be probably 60-plus horses. Who knows what’s going to happen in the next few weeks but we’ve been very lucky this year.

“We’ve had very few injuries and most of the horses are getting there at this point in time.”

A cracking week of racing is expected.