Five things: Ben Linfoot on the Willie Mullins team

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Willie Mullins’ Closutton yard has not been the all-singing all-dancing production we’ve become used to in recent years this season.

Setback after setback has forced Ireland’s 11-times champion jumps trainer to play a stalking role behind Gordon Elliott in this season’s title race and, while he was far from resigned to defeat, he acknowledged he has a real battle on his hands if he’s to make it a dozen wins in a few months’ time.

“It’s going to be tough,” said Mullins. “The sheer weight of numbers is tough. We’ll have horses for the festivals but whether that’s enough or not I don’t know. 

“Then you have races like the Irish National – we’d need to win it without Gordon being in the first three to get back level. So that’s the scale of the task that we have.”

Whether he’ll be Irish champion trainer again this season or not, Mullins has conjured up another remarkably strong Cheltenham Festival team despite missing Vautour, Annie Power, Faugheen, Min and those 60 Gigginstown horses that were moved out of his yard at the start of the campaign.

"People expect a lot from our team and we're hoping rather than expecting, we're always hoping,” he said.

“They tell me I have four, five or six favourites. I can’t see them myself but maybe I’m a bit more pessimistic. 

“I didn’t think we’d have anything like this going to Cheltenham this year. I just hope the markets are right.”

It’s actually seven favourites, with Melon, Vroum Vroum Mag, Douvan, Carter McKay, Yorkhill, Un De Sceaux and Airlie Beach the ones the bookies feel will be the stars of the show.

And, like in previous years, it could be a Sky Bet Supreme win that kick-starts the Mullins jamboree yet again…

Let’s Get Fruity In The Supreme

I’ve gone on record as saying I couldn’t have Melon for the Sky Bet Supreme at the prices, but if there was one horse I wanted to back for the Festival today on the back of trainer vibes, it is the one named after a large fruit.

It was what Mullins said and how he said it.

This next sentence came after a thoughtful pause, when asked if it would be tough for Ruby Walsh to decide between maiden hurdle winner Melon and strong-travelling Grade One second Bunk Off Early in the Supreme.

“When you're looking at what Melon does at home, all the time, I'd say it will be an easy enough decision for Ruby.”

He also spoke of his fine pedigree, his impressive physique, how he thought ‘Champion Hurdle horse’ when he bought him.

Melon doesn’t have the experience. Mullins acknowledged that. Nothing since Flown in 1992 has won the Supreme on the back of one run.

But the reputation is certainly there. Mullins exuded the same kind of confidence he did with Vautour and Douvan prior to their wins in the Festival curtain raiser.

And if I don’t back him, I fear it will be me that will be the melon.

Getting Giggy With It

When asked if he’d be flying by Ryanair to Cheltenham, Willie Mullins laughed.

“I could get the ferry this year!” was his response and he was in philosophical mood when pressed about the impact of losing those 60 Gigginstown horses at the start of the season.

"I've just forgotten about them. They've gone and we just get on with what we have,” he said.

"You'll get people on the outside looking in comparing what might have been, but it's the way it is.

"I can't do anything about it and it's done. We knew doing what we were doing what was going to happen and we said we'd take the consequences.

"What's done is done and I'm not dwelling on it.

"If you look back, you're finished. You've got to look forward.

"This season has been tough, but we've had some fantastic years and it goes up and down.

"I'm well used to accepting disappointment in this game. Everyone in jump racing gets used to disappointments and hopefully we have some nice young horses coming along out of those novices.

“If you want to get disappointed I always think ‘well, things have been fantastic’. I think we’re lucky here and we’ve still got a good team of horses.

“These things happen in sport. I suppose Claudio Ranieri will be thinking the same thing today. Things happen and you just try and pick up and go on again.”

Annie, Are You Okay?

Well, yes. She is actually. Last year’s Champion Hurdle winner looked on good terms with herself as she continues her recovery and a return at the Punchestown Festival has been pencilled in for the nine-year-old. 

“Annie Power is riding out,” Mullins said. “She seems good, we’re very pleased with how she’s responding. We’ll aim for Punchestown with her. We could [head to France]. We’ll see. Let’s get her back first.”

Faugheen on the other hand, looks less likely to be seen this season. However, retirement talk about the 2015 Champion Hurdle hero was quickly balked.

“I’m sure we’ll see Faugheen again. 

“Whether it’s this season or next I don’t know. I wouldn’t have any reason to retire him. The problem he has now should be maximum 12 weeks.

“The first thing was a thing in his hoof which is completely resolved and this is a thing in his hind quarters which I think in 12 weeks he’ll be alright.

“We won’t be going the Gordon Elliott route and going to Galway but we’ll be getting him out early next season anyway.”

And interestingly, out of all the Rich Ricci-owned stars that are sidelined it was Min that seemed to hurt Mullins the most.

“Min is good, he’s just got a stress fracture. He was probably the most disappointing of the whole lot as he was a good sound horse and doing everything right.”

Jackie Can

Jackie Mullins plays a key role in the training business and son Patrick says if Djakadam wins the Timico Cheltenham Gold Cup it could, in part, be down to her.

“This year we didn’t go to Leopardstown for the Irish Gold Cup,” said Patrick. 

“My mother was saying that we’ve won eight Irish Gold Cups, which is brilliant, but we’ve no Cheltenham Gold Cup and maybe we should be changing our tactics.

"Dad has listened to mum for once this year and if he does win I think Jackie would have to take a big slice of the credit.”

Second in the last two Gold Cups, Djakadam goes into this year’s race on the back of an uninterrupted preparation and the two horses that beat him the last two years, Coneygree and Don Cossack, are out of the picture.

“It’s as good a chance as he’s ever had,” Patrick said.

“The Fellow was placed three times in the Gold Cup before winning it fourth time so we’ve got time on our side!

“Last year when he got his cut it was extraordinary. He didn’t jump another fence from when he fell in January to the first fence in the Gold Cup and he jumped spectacularly.”

Extraordinary indeed. And something else extraordinary is the fact that the Champion Hurdle remains the only race out of the four Cheltenham ‘majors’ that Willie Mullins has won. A remarkable thing, really, given his recent dominance of all things Fez.

Douvan is expected to change that statistic in the Champion Chase, but you get the feeling that confidence is growing about Djakadam in the big one, too.

After all that’s happened at Mullins’ yard this season, it would be the sweetest of successes if he were finally able to strike gold.