By David Ord, Horse Racing, Wed February 05, 2025 · 17h ago

The horse isn’t there, he’s out on the gallop over the road with 15 stablemates who are also bound for Prestbury Park.

103 winners at the meeting and counting for the master trainer, a figure that will rise, possibly significantly, in five weeks’ time.

But nothing is taken for granted, it can’t be. For Mullins the nightmare that befell Nicky Henderson last season is always at the back of his mind. You need good horses to win at Cheltenham, but you also need luck and a clear passage through to the week itself.

“I think of my father when he was training Dawn Run for the Champion Hurdle. Gaye Brief was favourite for Mercy Rimell and we heard just before the meeting that he’d got injured and I remember we were in the yard clapping our hands but my father heard it and said ‘There but for the grace of God go I’. 

“And now I’m his position and every morning I wake up and don’t get a bad report about any of the horses, let alone the Grade One horses we have here today, that’s a blessing.

“I’m not wishing bad luck on me and I’m not wishing bad luck on my competitors. Most yards have one horse, and that horse gets you up every morning as you prepare for Cheltenham and the Grand National or the big festivals and to go out in the yard and for your Head Lad to tell you that a horse is injured and you know looking at it, he’s out for the season, that’s awful, that sucker-punch. I just hope we all get there.

“What happened to Nicky last year, to me is what we all dread, that we have something going through the yard a week or two weeks before Cheltenham. We were gutted for him, and it could have been us. Every year we’re the same, we’re all on the look-out for horses coughing, going down maybe with a colic, something unusual in the yard. Every time you get something unusual, then something else happens and it’s a coincidence then you get three coincidences, and it doesn’t become a coincidence, you’re wondering is something going through the yard?

“And that’s what happens. You get odd things happening with injuries to horses and if you get two or three of them in a row then the horses are under a cloud, and you have to watch out and back off everything.

“Horses have a good immune system, they get over it quick, but we’re all the time on the watch out, everyone is, that’s why it’s important to have good staff, and we have fantastic staff here. The minute anything goes wrong they come and tell us and it’s a huge worry all the time.”

Galopin Des Champs is centre of attention, he has to be four days after winning a third Paddy Power Irish Gold Cup and little over a month away from bidding to follow in the hoofprints of Golden Miller, Arkle and Best Mate at Prestbury Park.

A third win there, Mullins admits, would be the pinnacle of his training career. State Man is on track to defend his Champion Hurdle crown, Lossiemouth set to join him too, thankfully OK after her horror fall at Leopardstown on Sunday.

 

Things are a little more uncertain around Gaelic Warrior in the Betway Queen Mother Champion Chase but as Mullins talks through the 15 horses printed out on an A4 sheet, it’s the youngsters who take up most of his time.

A week ago we were wondering if he even had and anything with genuine star quality in the novice hurdle department.

Now Kopek Des Bordes and Final Demand have emerged as red-hot favourites for the Sky Bet Supreme and the Turners. Bright prospects both.

Timeform said the former was ‘cut from a different cloth’ after he routed his rivals in Sunday’s Grade One Tattersalls Ireland Novice Hurdle. And someone else agrees.

“What he did the other day…Ted Walsh rang me the following morning and he said he hadn’t seen a performance like that since Golden Cygnet which is huge for someone like Ted to say,” Mullins said.

“Paul got down off the horse after the race and said to me, he ran away with him three times in the race. Most normal horses, if you run away with a jockey once, that’s enough, their winning chance has gone.

“But he was running away with him through the race, then when a loose horse came up, I was watching it unfold and thought ‘this is going to drive this fellow mad’ which it did. He went on two or three lengths Around the second last bend coming to the second last hurdle and then Paul got a grip on him again before he went away up the straight.

“It was a huge performance, we’d never ask a horse that question at home, and it blew my mind what he did at Leopardstown, against a field of top-class horses.”

 

Salvator Mundi was favourite for the Sky Bet Supreme himself before the weekend. Now he’s seemingly the stable second string for the race. But he’s on target and held in high regard too.

“He goes for the Supreme Novices’. I think he’s a horse with a lot of tactical speed and he didn’t jump well because they were going so slow in the Moscow Flyer the other day,” Mullins said.

“We have Kopek Des Bordes in the race now, it’s going to be interesting which one Paul rides, we haven’t talked about it yet, but this fellow will need to do a lot at home I think.

“The race the other day was inconclusive the thing I liked about it was after looking like he had blown up at the second last, once he got his second wind, he came through and won convincingly. For me it takes a good horse to do that in Grade One company.”

And Final Demand is clearly a very good horse himself having spreadeagled his field in the Grade One Nathaniel Lacy & Partners Solicitors Novice Hurdle on Saturday.

He’s come a long way in a short space of time in two career runs under Rules and it’s anyone’s guess as to where his ceiling is.

 

The six-year-old also heads the market for the Albert Bartlett but this is one decision Willie is happy to make well in advance of the Festival.

“The Albert Bartlett wouldn’t be a race I’d want to go for with him. He’s only had two runs, and I’d like a horse who started earlier in the season for that one,” he said.

“I think it’s a tough race on horses for the rest of their career and I don’t think he needs that. I think two miles five on that track at Cheltenham in the Turners, up that hill, is very tough on a horse and that would be a big enough question to ask him at this stage.

“Looking at him, he looks a real chaser. He must be 17.2, he’s as strong as any horse I’ve had. Strength wise, he probably looks more like Florida Pearl, he’s so strong through the body whereas Galopin Des Champs is a very different type of horse, he’s much more evenly balanced through the body and a lighter framed individual.

“This fellow is a big unit and I’m happy to do that (the Turners) before going novice chasing next season.”

And as the photographers take their shots of the trainer with Galopin Des Champs and State Man, you know the next generation are on the way through. We weren’t sure at Christmas but now we are. The kids are alright.

by Sporting Life