In Danny Mullins’ back catalogue of 64 Cheltenham Festival rides, number 14 was a real-life, day-time soap opera.
For nearly three miles, he controlled the grade one Albert Bartlett with a cute front-running ride on Milsean, a Willie Mullins outsider, and crossing the final hurdle they were still in front. In the pitiless climb to the line, though, they were passed at last by Martello Tower, a horse trained by his mother Mags, and owned by Barry Connell, the man who had sacked him.
In Michael O’Leary’s Gigginstown silks, Mullins stood up in his stirrups and grabbed the hand of Adrian Heskin, the winning jockey. Whatever berserk emotions were coursing through his young body quickly settled in ranking order. Heart and blood first. “I hadn’t ridden my first Festival winner at that stage, and my mother only had two or three runners ever over there,” he says now, eight years later.
“I was beaten in a ding-dong finish. I was as happy as I’d ever been in defeat that day, for my mother. I knew how much work she had put into it over the years. And maybe I had a foolish confidence in myself. I said, ‘No, my day will come. I’m good enough. It will happen.’”
It had been a pivotal season in Mullins’s young career. He was just 20 years old when Connell hired him as his retained rider, and 22 when the arrangement ended suddenly, in the autumn of 2014. In that time they had shared three grade one successes and more winners in the second season than the first. Nobody had seen the separation coming.
“It was a big job to have at 20. I probably shouldn’t have had it for the amount of experience I had at the time [only 25 career winners over jumps]. There was a certain amount of pressure in it, but I love pressure. I put myself under pressure. It was a shock [when it ended], yeah, it was a shock. This is a tough game. Barry has done very well since, I’ve done very well since. We’re both ambitious men. You wish everyone the best. We keep going.”
I was as happy as I’d ever been in defeat that day, for my mother. I knew how much work she had put into it over the years
That evening he rang Ken Whelan, the former rider who had started up as a jockey’s agent, and asked if he would take him on. Jumps racing is a game of falls. The trick is to bounce. “He’s a grafter,” says Whelan. “A wicked, savage worker.” In Mullins’ first full season as a freelance he rode for 68 different trainers; a year later he rode for 112, a staggering number.
“That was a crossroads in my career where I had been sacked from a good job and I needed to perform again,” says Mullins. “I went back into Willie’s [yard, his uncle] a long way down the pecking order, but that competitive environment in Willie’s is fantastic for a rider. And at least Willie could say to an owner that I had performed at grade one level.
“Felix Yonger was a very important horse for me around that time. He won a grade one at the Punchestown Festival [2015] and it’s all about the grade ones really.”
It is 15 years since Mullins rode his first winner on the Flat for Jim Bolger. His parents Tony and Mags split up when Mullins was a boy, and he boarded for a couple of years in Kilkenny College, but they couldn’t keep him in school after he sat the Inter Cert. Bolger’s yard was his place of further education.
“It was a fair grounding. I don’t think I became a better rider in Jim’s, but I became a better person. I learned an awful lot about life up there. As probably a slightly wilder teenager than the normal it was good for me at the time. He probably wasn’t as strict as the legend goes, but being part of the team up there you had to toe the line.
“Leaving school and being a bit of a tearaway it was good to know that you had to get up when your alarm goes off. I was never a minute late. You muck out, you brush your horse. The first year of your apprenticeship, you clean the toilets. Did he ever get cross with me? Plenty of times, and probably not half enough. I thought he was being hard on me at the time but when I look back now I think, ‘Why wasn’t he twice as hard?’”
People often ask, am I more confident in myself now? I think I always had the confidence
For jockeys, the circular equation never changes: without good horses there is no chance of winning good races; without the confidence of trainers and owners, there is no possibility of riding good horses. How do acquire one without the other?
When he became part of the team at Willie Mullins’ yard Ruby Walsh and David Casey were still riding, and Paul Townend, the heir apparent, had already been champion jockey. But even in that scenario there were opportunities. He came second in the Champion Hurdle on Artic Fire one year, when he was a 20/1 shot and Mullins’ third string. That year, Walsh had to choose between Faugheen and Hurricane Fly.
Mullins just needed to be patient. The depth and breadth of his uncle’s string was growing relentlessly, year on year, and the first jockey could only ride one at a time.
“People often ask, am I more confident in myself now? I think I always had the confidence,” he says. “I always had an appetite for success. The thing is, people are more confident in me now. I think I’ve been riding well for the last four or five years.
“At the start of those years I was lucky that maybe some trainers and owners spotted my ability – which led to opportunities to win bigger races. It’s up to me to deliver the results from there. I think I’m a much more intelligent rider now. I win on horses that I shouldn’t win on more regularly.”
This is a tough game. Barry has done very well since, I’ve done very well since. We’re both ambitious men
In racing, the numbers are an implacable witness. For years Mullins was in and out of the top ten on the Irish jockey’s table, and never close to the top; right now he’s third, having already ridden more winners in this campaign than in any previous season. At the Dublin Racing Festival he rode three grade one winners, more than any other jockey at the two day meeting.
“The past is a dangerous place to be living,” said Mullins, a couple of days later. Blinkered.
At Cheltenham, the breakthrough came slowly. After Milsean was chinned, Mullins waited six years and 35 rides for his first Cheltenham Festival winner. Flooring Porter in the 2021 Stayer’s Hurdle was a spare ride after Jonathan Moore stood himself down. He remembers looking at his book of rides at the beginning of that week and not seeing a winner. Who knows?
“I never thought it wouldn’t happen. It didn’t really bother me. Last year was the first time I’ve had a ride in Cheltenham where I said, ‘This horse will win,’ [Flooring Porter]. I went out into the parade ring knowing I was on the best horse in the race. I’d seen that he had gone from favourite to second favourite and I couldn’t believe it. I said, ‘How do they think they’re going to beat me?’ To have that confidence in a horse at Cheltenham is unbelievable.”
This year? Flooring Porter’s preparation has been interrupted, and his form during the season hasn’t been as good. But there will be something else. Willie Mullins will be mob-handed next week and Townend won’t pick the right one every time, no more than Ruby Walsh did in his day. Mullins has put himself in position. Ten years to now.
