Top Irish trainer Willie Mullins laid down a sizeable marker for the 2025 Cheltenham Festival with a fabulous seven-timer at Leopardstown last weekend.
Mullins’ septet featured six Grade 1 winners, all of whom will be heavily backed on sports betting platforms to follow up at the National Hunt showpiece next month.
The undisputed highlight of the Dublin Racing Festival was Galopin Des Champs’ breathtaking victory under jockey Paul Townend in the Irish Gold Cup.
The nine-year-old was winning the race for the third successive season and will now bid for another three-in-row in the prestigious Cheltenham Gold Cup.
Mullins has set his sights on achieving what many people believe is the holy grail of accomplishments in National Hunt racing.
“To be associated with a horse like this who is so well known now is a huge honour,” Mullins told Racing TV. “We’re all delighted to be involved and we just hope the dream stays alive.
“We’ve got five plus weeks for that day to come and I’m not dreaming it will happen. If you think it’s going to happen it probably won’t, so I’m going in the opposite direction.
“If this horse can do what Arkle and Best Mate did, it’s a once in a lifetime job, isn’t it? I think there was forty years between them, so we’re maybe twenty years too soon!
“We had a go with Al Boum Photo, but he couldn’t win the third (in 2022). I think we’ve a bit more of a chance this year.”
Mullins will have a strong supporting cast at this year’s Cheltenham Festival as he bids to add to his career tally of 103 winners at the meeting.
Final Demand is now prominent in the betting for several novice hurdles after maintaining his unbeaten record with a devastating victory over Wingmen.
Majborough and Ballyburn are among Mullins’ leading contenders in the novice chase ranks following their respective victories at the Dublin Racing Festival.
Mullins suffered a setback in the Irish Champion Hurdle when Lossiemouth crashed out of the race, but he still saddled the winner as State Man cruised home in front.
The pair are on course to renew rivalries at Cheltenham, but could find it tough to lower the colours of the Nicky Henderson-trained Constitution Hill.
Intriguingly, Mullins believes his banker bet of the meeting is Kopek Des Bordes, who is a short-priced favourite for the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle on the opening day.
The unbeaten five-year-old did not impress everyone with the manner of his jumping when winning over the festive period, but looked much more professional at Leopardstown.
Mullins has admitted that the ease of Kopek Des Bordes’s success astounded him, especially as the race did not unfold as he would have hoped for the promising hurdler.
“It was a huge performance,” Mullins said (h/t the Guardian). “We would never ask a horse that sort of question at home but to me – it blew my mind, against a field of top-class horses.
“(Fellow trainer) Ted Walsh rang me the following day and he said that he hadn’t seen a performance like that since Golden Cygnet (the 1978 Supreme Novices’ Hurdle winner), which is something huge for someone like Ted to say.
“Paul got down off the horse after the race and said he ran away with him three times in the race. Most normal horses, if they run away with their jockey once, that’s enough – that’s their winning chance gone.”
