“It could be a hell of a year,” said
Willie Mullins as he hosted a pre-Cheltenham Festival media morning at his stables near Carlow on 18 February. The champion Irish jumps trainer expects to take around 50 horses over to Cheltenham next month, 10 or so more than the impressive squads he has brought for the past couple of years.
Here is what he had to say about their likely targets and chances. Though notorious for postponing decisions until the last possible moment, Mullins was on this occasion forthcoming in nominating the races he thought would best suit many of his horses.
Hurricane Fly
If Hurricane Fly was two years younger, he’d be favourite. He’s done everything that a clear favourite should be. It’s just his age, he’s 11. It can be done at 11. He’s got class. People have said he doesn’t run as well in Cheltenham. I’m not so sure. How many times has he run there, four? Won twice, which is good enough for anyone, a 50% record. And I think I had two good excuses for the other two times, so I’m happy that when he was really right, he scored there. Every horse has to be really right on the day and things go right for them. I just felt last year that for his last two runs he wasn’t sparking the way he can spark. But he wasn’t not sparking enough not to run him. I felt we had to run. So far this year he hasn’t shown any of that sign. I would say this year he is sparking plenty.
[At the start of this season] I felt if he trained the way he did for Cheltenham and Punchestown last year, early in the season, we weren’t going to do anything with him. I felt he deserved to run to find out. We just changed things with him at home. Paul [Townend] rides him all the time and he’s a great indicator, he’d be able to tell me down to the ounce how he’s training, and he was giving me positive feedback all the time. So we said we’d take our chance and run and really got him ready for that first run, which we wouldn’t have done other years. And it paid off. So I said, at least he’s won his Grade One, that’s our season started. What happens from here on in is what’s going to happen and the horse will tell us. He’s very clear about how he feels. So far, it’s been very good.
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I think a lot of people were putting that into our minds that he was done but I know he has too much class. But I was ready to accept it if he didn’t train this year. But he trained, he came back in and trained well and when I trained him hard, he took it. Whereas towards the second half of last season, when I was training him hard, he wasn’t taking it, he was just going through the motions. This year, he has been grabbing the bridle when we’ve asked him to work and doing his work properly.
He was quite tired after the Irish Champion Hurdle, probably more tired than I’d ever seen him. He certainly seemed to be back in himself for a week after it, when it normally takes him a day or two to recover. But he’s back as good as ever again now. [Who will win?] I’m a dyed in the wool Hurricane Fly fan, so it’s probably not fair to ask me. It’d be my dream result for the whole of Cheltenham if Hurricane Fly can win the Champion Hurdle. Obviously, Faugheen is the future. If he can win it, the potential to win another one after that would be fantastic. What do you say, the king is dead, long live the king? . . . if Hurricane Fly goes down and Faugheen rises. I hope it’s one of the two of them.
Faugheen
Is doing everything right. [smiling] Nigel Twiston-Davies wants to know what Faugheen has beaten. I’m going to side with him [Faugheen] for the time being. [At the end of last season] I thought he should go novice chasing and we analysed everything out and looked at what we had for novice chases. We looked at what he was doing and the fact that he hadn’t been beaten. I looked at Vautour [in the same ownership] and I looked at him and I thought everyone was keener for him to go back hurdling. And I thought, right, let’s do it, because to have a potential Champion Hurdler in a yard is huge for the yard, rather than have a horse going for the Arkle. So we thought that Vautour could possibly win an Arkle and maybe be a Gold Cup horse one day and we weren’t as sure about Faugheen doing that. If it had been different owners, it might have been a different call but after speaking to the owners and after speaking to Ruby [Walsh] and just generally mulling it over, we decided to go down that route. We’ve seen plenty of horses that have gone from Kempton to the
Champion Hurdle without a run. We’re happy to do that. I didn’t want to travel to England again, I didn’t want the two of them [Faugheen and Hurricane Fly] taking each other on and then we prepared him for the Red Mills and decided not to run, just with ground and everything on the day. I’m happy enough we didn’t. I asked Ruby about his jumping experience, does he need another run over hurdles and he thought not. We thought long and hard over that decision, whether we’d run again, and I was guided by him, if he needed more race-jumping, and he thought he didn’t.
Arctic Fire
He’s in the wings there, I think improving all the time. I’m not discounting him. Remember, he was only done [half a length] in the County Hurdle last year and County Hurdle winners have come and won it. He is a horse that always showed me plenty at home, like two years ago, as a three-year-old doing his work, I thought this fella was a bit better than any of them and I still probably haven’t got the best out of him yet. But we will hopefully at some stage. A stronger run race will suit him, he loves the track at Cheltenham. If he doesn’t win a Champion, he’s going to win a real good race.
Boston Bob
He’ll go for the Gold Cup. I was disappointed with him the last day but when your horse is good enough to go for those races, especially the likes of the Gold Cup, it’s got to go. If you went and won the Ryanair, you’d say to yourself, GHod, should we have gone for the Gold Cup? It looks an open race.
On His Own
He jumps a bit right, which is not good. But he has so much stamina. If it’s like last year’s Gold Cup, a real good gallop from end to end, I’m hoping he’d be there.
Djakadam
He was very, very good at Gowran. I think the extra two furlongs will be a help. If you look at the last performance of those three [for the Gold Cup], Djakadam’s looks best. However, it’s only handicap form. But we can go back to Cheltenham last year and look at the way he handled the track, made a novice mistake to fall. I think he will handle the track and hopefully the experience he’s showed will be enough. I don’t think jumping is going to be an issue, any more than it would be for any other horse. He got around Newbury, three-quarters or seven-eighths fit. Gowran is a fair test of any horse in that ground. As Ruby said, normally in the Thyestes in those conditions, you’re hanging on from four out if you think you have something, you’re trying to get a breath of air in your horse. Ruby was looking around, trying to get a swing at him and the other horses, seasoned handicappers, were just slugging. Ruby said he was never going as easy [in previous rides] in the Thyestes and he [Djakadam] had top weight, which, to me, is a Gold Cup performance. We felt he’d be ideal for Newbury but we didn’t envisage the dry autumn we had, we didn’t get a run into him, we didn’t get work into him because everywhere was so dry around here, I didn’t get the type of work that I wanted into him. We ended up in Newbury because we got carried along ourselves. We felt, well, he’s got the weight advantage and let’s see. You have to ask those questions sometimes but it was a really unfair question to ask the horse after the prep he had, so I’m putting a line through that.
Champagne Fever
I imagine the way the cards are falling it will look like the Champion Chase. Probably you would think after his performance the other day, he should go for the Ryanair. But I think connections and everyone would probably prefer the Champion Chase. One or the other anyway. I love the fact that we rode him differently [at Gowran on Saturday] and he responded and jumped fantastic and loved it and seemed to really enjoy himself. That’ll put him in a good frame of mind, going back to Cheltenham. Someone pointed out to me that Stowaway [his sire] never had a Grade One winner over three miles, which sort of makes you think a bit different to what we had thought last year [that Champagne Fever would improve at three miles]. Certainly his dam’s side looks like three miles plus and maybe ridden back, waited with, he could be better at a trip. But we take his Cheltenham form into account, three runs, only beaten a short-head once, all over the minimum trip. It probably takes a two and a half miler to win the Champion Chase anyway so we’d probably rather have a crack and fail at the Champion Chase than go elsewhere. You’re going there with what could look an open enough Champion Chase and it might be the year to go and have a crack at it. If he doesn’t do it this year, he’s not going to go and do it next year.
