What more can be said about Willie Mullins that hasn’t already been said?
While he has been considered a top trainer for well over two decades, claiming his first Champion Trainer title in 2000/01, it has been since 2007/8 that Mullins has taken his performance to previously unheard-of levels.
In February 2013, with over two months of the season remaining, he broke Aidan O’Brien’s record haul of winners in a season of 156 in 1995/6 and eventually went on to record a remarkable total of 193 winners. He bettered that total in 2017/18 with a sensational tally of 212 winners.
Mullins, a six-times champion at Cheltenham, is the most successful trainer in the history of the Festival with 65 winners at the big meeting. He landed a long-awaited Gold Cup in 2019 with Al Boum Photo and has trained a sequence of household names and Cheltenham Festival heroes such as Quevega, Hurricane Fly, Faugheen and Douvan.
As we have become accustomed to, Mullins has a formidable team of horses at his disposal for the upcoming Cheltenham Festival and he was good enough to talk attheraces.com ’s Kevin Blake through his team for that meeting and some of his other stars.