Willie Mullins
The National Hunt season stretches out in front of you from here, in the Closutton sun. It circles around you actually, circles around Willie Mullins, numbered and everything, one to 21. Acclaimed heroes and heroines of yesterseason, likely heroes and heroines of the one that starts around about now, gathering momentum as the temperatures drop and the evenings close in.
Galopin Des Champs is number one, no real surprise there, Adam Connolly on board, no surprise there either. Adam Connolly is rarely very far from Galopin Des Champs. Three-time Irish Gold Cup winner, dual Cheltenham Gold Cup winner, the Timos gelding’s bid for that rare gem that is a hat-trick at Cheltenham in March was just thwarted by Inothewayurthinkin. But he bounced back the following month to win the Punchestown Gold Cup, and he’s ready for road again this season.
State Man is number two, no major surprise there either, Paul Townend on his back, as he usually is. When Paul Townend has ever had to choose – State Man or Impaire Et Passe, State Man or Vauban, State Man or Lossiemouth – he has always chosen State Man. Marie Donnelly’s horse has raced 19 times for Willie Mullins, and Paul Townend has ridden him 18 times. The ride’s faith has been continually vindicated too, and rewarded.
Famously, the pair of them had the Champion Hurdle in the bag at Cheltenham last March when they came down at the final flight, a bid for back-to-back wins scuppered by the final obstacle. But, like stable companion Galopin Des Champs, State Man bounced back at Punchestown, won his third Punchestown Champion Hurdle. Only Hurricane Fly has won more than three.
Majborough is here too, and Gaelic Warrior, and Fact To File and Lossiemouth and Kopek Des Bordes. It’s a Who’s Who of the 2024/25 National Hunt season. And Nick Rockett, winner ofthe Grand National at Aintree in April with the trainer’s son Patrick on board.
“I don’t think it can get any better than this,” said Willie Mullins then. “It’s like something out of a Disney film. This is the summit for me.”
Six months on, and the lustre of that day has not waned.
“I think Nick Rockett winning the Grand National, with Patrick riding, was maybe the highlight of my life,” he says now. “Putting your son up and winning the Grand National. As a father. It’s huge.”
There were other peaks last season though. If the Grand National was Everest, then Cheltenham was K2. Ten more winners, equalling the record number of winners that any trainer has had in a single Cheltenham Festival that he himself set in 2022, took Willie Mullins’ Cheltenham Festival tally to 113, 38 more than next-best Nicky Henderson. And champion National Hunt trainer in Ireland again – it almost goes without saying, assume that Willie Mullins is champion until you hear differently – for the 19th time in total and the 18th time on the spin. More significantly, he was champion National Hunt trainer in Britain too last season for the second season in a row.
Vincent O’Brien won the British National Hunt trainers’ championship twice too, in 1952/53 and in 1953/54. No Irish trainer emulated the feat of the legendary Dr O’Brien until Willie Mullins did, 70 years later. And the first three home in the Grand National, and five of the first seven. These are extraordinary feats.
The horses tick around the gallop in front of you like clockwork. Anzadam and Kargese and Salvator Mundi and Bambino Fever and Dinoblue. ‘Two big’ is the usual directive, around the big gallop twice, fitness at a premium on the woodchip gallop that is as deep as the deep end.
Patrick gives the directives, and Willie agrees or counters or questions, and that’s new. Willie’s hard drive is nearly full, he tells you. Patrick will have them all sorted before he even gets there.
Team is important at Closutton, team of horses, team of people, team of background staff. The quality of the horses is there for all to see, as deep and as broad a collective as you will find anywhere, but it is the quality of the people that hone the operation into the unprecedented success story that it is. The parts that whir away in the background, Ruby Walsh and David Casey and Patrick Mullins and Paul Townend, all steeped in knowledge and experience and nous. And yet, ask any of them, and they will defer to Willie. Willie will tweak something, they will tell you, spot something, do something, change something, not do something. That’s the sprinkling. Call it what you want, call it the unfathomable, the jenesaisquoi, the indefinable.
Call it genius.
The operation goes beyond National Hunt too, and beyond national frontiers. Yesterday, Willie Mullins had three runners in the Cesarewitch at Newmarket. Next Saturday, Absurde is set to run in the Caulfield Cup in Australia and, all going well, he will run in the Melbourne Cup on 4th November. The Saturday beforehand, Ethical Diamond will line up in the Breeders’ Cup Turf at Del Mar in California.
He says that he doesn't like to change too much, that he likes to stick to what works, as long as it works. Like, all going well, Galopin Des Champs will, this season again, step the stepstones that he has stepped through each of the last two seasons: John Durkan Chase, Savills Chase, Irish Gold Cup, Cheltenham Gold Cup, Punchestown Gold Cup. His campaign maps itself.
State Man likewise. Morgiana Hurdle, Leopardstown at Christmas, Irish Champion Hurdle, Cheltenham. Fact To File will also start off in the John Durkan Chase again and go from there, with the Ryanair Chase (again) or the Gold Cup as his ultimate objective for the season. Nick Rockett will be given the chance to prove that he is a Gold Cup horse, with a return to Aintree in the back of your mind.
Il Etait Temps will be trained for the Tingle Creek Chase at Sandown in early December, and that’s new. Only because he was so good at Sandown in April in winning the Celebration Chase, and, if that had the happy side-consequence of getting a foothold in the British trainers’ championship, that’s just a bonus. Bambino Fever is going over hurdles, Final Demand is going over fences, Kopek Des Bordes is going over fences, Ballyburn is going back over hurdles.
The ascent begins again.
© The Sunday Times, 12th October 2025
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