Willie Mullins

Given the dominance of Irish trainers at the Cheltenham Festival in the last decade or so, it is nigh on impossible to refer to the biggest four days of the jumps season without mentioning Willie Mullins. Based in Closutton, Muine Bheag, County Carlow, Mullins enjoys the patronage of most of the leading owners in Ireland, in some cases exclusively, and it is no real surprise that he has been the perennial champion trainer in the Emerald Isle since 2008.

March 14, 2025 – which, coincidentally, is Cheltenham Gold Cup Day – marks the thirtieth anniversary of Mullins’ first winner at the Cheltenham Festival, Tourist Attraction, ridden by Mark Dwyer, in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle. The Master of Closutton has long since become the force majeure at ‘The Olympics of Horse Racing’; on March 13, 2024, Mullins reached the landmark of 100 Festival winners when Jasmin De Vaux, ridden, fittingly, by his son and assitant trainer, Patrick, won the Weatherbys Champion Bumper . He subsequently saddled two more winners, Absurde in the County Hurdle and Galopin Des Champs in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, to take his career total to 103.

Galopin Des Champs was, of course, defending his Gold Cup title and took Mullins’ tally in the ‘Blue Riband’ event to four, after another back-to-back winner, Al Boum Photo, in 2019 and 2020. Mullins has won the Champion Hurdle five times, with Hurricane Fly (2011 and 2013), Faugheen (2015), Annie Power (2016) and State Man (2024), the Queen Mother Champion Chase twice, with Energumene (2022 and 2023), and the Stayers’ Hurdle twice, with Nichols Canyon (2017) and Penhill (2018). He has also farmed several other races, not least the aforementioned Weatherbys Champion Bumper, in which he has saddled an eye-watering 13 winners down the years, and the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle and County Handicap Hurdle, in which he has saddled seven winners apiece.

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