Willie Mullins, champion in Britain too
In the end, it went down to the wire. The final day at the end of the dramatic final throes of the 2024/25 British National Hunt season at Sandown yesterday, and Willie Mullins was crowned champion again.
It is a remarkable feat, the champion National Hunt trainer in Ireland crowned champion National Hunt trainer in Britain as well, even if the novelty value was diluted by the fact that, in the end, it was not wholly unexpected. Mullins had been favourite for this year’s title, in front of long-time title-race leader Dan Skelton, since the Aintree Grand National meeting ended three weeks ago, and there had been plenty of talk about it in the interim. The ebbs and flows of the Mullins/Skelton machinations made headline racing news every day since the start of the racing week.
There is also the fact that the standards that you set are used as the barometer by which your performance is judged. Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder, and when you have the 1-2-3 in the Grand National, how narrow can the chink be?
And there is the fact that Willie Mullins won the title last year.
Perennial champion in one jurisdiction, to simultaneously mount a title challenge in another is highly unusual. Of course it couldn’t happen, but imagine Liverpool, Premier League title in the bag long before the end of the season (check), also winning La Liga by winning their last game on the last day of the Spanish season. Imagine one outfit having the strength in depth to make that possible, if it was allowable. Although that would be different too: England and Spain are not two of only three jurisdictions in the world in which football is played.
When he won the British National Hunt trainers’ championship last year, Willie Mullins achieved a feat that no Irish-based trainer had achieved since Vincent O’Brien won the title in 1953/54. That’s over 70 years ago. And yesterday, Mullins became the first Irish trainer since, well, Vincent O’Brien in 1952/53 and 1953/54 to win back-to-back British titles.
There was a feeling last October, as the National Hunt season started to gather pace, that, after winning the title last season, Mullins could start the defence of his crown from early this season. Last year, a title challenge was a slowly maturing thought if not quite an afterthought, suddenly emerging as a possibility after an extraordinary spring that saw Willie Mullins-trained horses win the Champion Hurdle and the Gold Cup and the Grand National. Then he had to go and win the Scottish Grand National too. If he was going to win the British National Hunt trainers’ championship again this season, went the logic, he couldn't be relying on a haul of that magnitude so late in the campaign.
But conversely, there was no planned or sustained title challenge from Mullins from early. Eighteen runners in Britain between October and January was only two more than he had last season during the same period.
Indeed, there wasn’t a recognised Mullins challenge until after Cheltenham. Before the 2025 Cheltenham Festival, he was 56th in the British trainers’ championship. After the Cheltenham Festival, 10 more Cheltenham winners in the bag and over £1.2 million in prize money, he was fourth.
Before Aintree, Mullins was still over £1.3 million behind Dan Skelton. Even victory in the Grand National on its own, and the £500,000 that went with it, wouldn’t really have put him within range. Then he had those four Grade 1 winners, the first four races on the first day of the Aintree Grand National meeting, and that unprecedented 1-2-3 in the Grand National, and 5 and 7 as well, for good measure. From six runners in the race.
Then the 1-2 in the Scottish Grand National, and it was on to Cheltenham’s April meeting and then on to Plumpton and Perth last week. The gap between the two protagonists widened and narrowed all last week, but it never closed. Skelton was always ahead. £69,172 ahead after racing last Saturday, £52,777 ahead after racing last Sunday, the gap narrowed to £23,562 after racing on Wednesday when Mullins’ horse Kiss Will beat Skelton’s horse Royal Infantry in the listed novices’ hurdle at Perth, and Fun Fun Fun and Paggane provided Mullins with a 1-2 in the listed mares’ chase.
Dan Skelton stretched his lead a little again on Thursday with an across-the-border treble, and he stretched it again on Friday with a winner at Perth and a second at Chepstow, so that, at the start of play yesterday morning, Skelton was £68,483 ahead, and the bookmakers said, 1/5 Mullins, 7/2 Skelton. Then Mullins won the Oaksey Chase with Gaelic Warrior, who was chased home by his stable companion Appreciate It, and the lead was slivered down to £2,636. Then Il Etait Temps won the Celebration Chase for Willie Mullins and Dan Skelton didn’t win the Bet365 Gold Cup with Hoe Joly Smoke, and that was that.
Mullins’ concentration on the British championship did not dilute his potency at the Punchestown Festival last year at the highest level, and it looks like he is going to be as strong as ever in the Grade 1 races at Punchestown again this week. Sixty-three runners in Britain in April last year, up from 19 in 2023, was a reflection of the scale of his challenge for last year’s title. He had 91 runners in Britain in April this year.
The number of Willie Mullins-trained winners at last year’s Punchestown Festival dropped to 10 last year, from 14 in 2022 and 17 in 2023, but eight of those 10 wins were at Grade 1 level, just one less Grade 1 win than the champion trainer had in 2023 and in 2022 and in 2021, and three more than he had in 2019.
Interestingly, Mullins had 10 winners at the Cheltenham Festival this year, and only one of them, Lossiemouth, has run since. She won the Aintree Hurdle and she is on track for Punchestown, as are Mullins’ other nine Cheltenham Festival winners. There are nine Grade 1 races at the Punchestown Festival priced up at present by the bookmakers, and Willie Mullins has the ante post favourite in seven of them.
Closutton’s representation in the Grade 1 races at the Punchestown Festival this week will run deep. Galopin Des Champs will be there, all being well, and State Man and Fact To File and Kopeck Des Bordes and Ballyburn and Lecky Watson and Bambino Fever and Majborough. And Willie Mullins. He’ll be there too.
© The Sunday Times, 27th April 2025
Back