Willie Mullins’s record-breaking season could wind up with jump racing’s dominant figure exerting an unprecedented grip on the Punchestown festival.
The first of five festival days starts on Tuesday with Mullins already assured of being crowned Ireland’s champion trainer for a 17th time when the National Hunt season ends on Saturday.
With 220 winners in the bag, he has already smashed his own record for races won in a single campaign. By the weekend the prize money record should also be broken.
Securing just under a million of the total €3.3 million up for grabs in prize money this week will see Mullins overhaul his 2019 record haul of €6.2 million for a season.
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Considering one firm is going just 20-1 about a clean-sweep of all 12 Grade 1 races up for grabs, it is all but unthinkable that benchmark won’t be reached.
Even by the standards of how Mullins notched 19 of the 40 festival races in 2021, this festival shapes as a potential bonanza for his Co. Carlow based operation.
With cross-channel raiders at a premium, and even domestic rivals such as Gordon Elliott and Henry de Bromhead appearing under pressure to compete, the man who passed 4,000 career winners last January looks in an overwhelmingly dominant position.
The 20-1 about total top-flight supremacy might look miserly to many but there will be more far-fetched bets struck this week considering how Mullins got close in 2015 by picking up 10 of the dozen contests.
Tuesday’s featured €300,000 William Hill Champion Chase sees the undisputed two-mile standard bearer Energumene top a quartet of Mullins contenders. The other pair of runners are rank outsiders.
He has three of the five lining up for the KPMG Champion Hurdle, including the odds-on Facile Vega, and four of the six in the day’s other Grade 1, the Dooley Insurance Champion Novice Chase.
[ Energumene headlines day one at PunchestownOpens in new window ]
To those anxious about any competitive deficit, Journey With Me is at least rated a likely favourite for that contest and would be a popular winner for the de Bromhead team.
The poignant loss of 13-year-old Jack de Bromhead last September has resonated throughout the jumps campaign, never more than with Honeysuckle’s emotional success at Cheltenham last month.
The now retired mare, who helped attract a record single-day crowd of nearly 41,000 to the Friday of last year’s fixture, is a notable festival absentee this time.
Other familiar figures to have retired include Davy Russell and Bryan Cooper while Jack Kennedy is a notable absentee due to his broken leg sustained in January.
Good news for Gordon Elliott is Jordan Gainford’s return to action for the first time since Cheltenham.
Gainford’s two rides on Tuesday include Found A Fifty in the Grade 1 novice hurdle while he will reunite with the popular Hewick in Wednesday’s Ladbrokes Gold Cup.
Shark Hanlon’s remarkable runner can’t budge Mullins from centre-stage however as his Cheltenham Gold Cup hero, and highest rated horse in training, Galopin Des Champs, is a prohibitive 1-3 favourite to emerge on top.
The day two feature is a rare contest in which Mullins is singly represented and Galopin Des Champs has a valid cross-channel challenger in Bravemansgame.
The horse who chased him home at Cheltenham was cleared to run after confirmation that the half-share in Bravemansgame owned by John Dance, whose WealthTek firm has been ordered to cease trading by Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority, has been sold.
A British Horseracing Authority spokesman said: “The FCA has informed the BHA that it has agreed to the sale, following an independent valuation, of Mr Dance’s 50 per cent share of Bravemansgame.
“The gelding was previously owned in partnership by John Dance and Bryan Drew, and has now been sold into the sole ownership of Bryan Drew.”
Paul Nicholls upset one Mullins Gold Cup winner at Punchestown when Clan Des Obeaux got the better of Al Boum Photo two years ago.
Galopin Des Champs perhaps looks an even bigger challenge although taking on Mullins en masse looks like representing the biggest task of all this week.
The only race he’s not represented in on Tuesday is the Ladies Cup but 21 of his horses are distributed among the rest of the card.
Energumene put up possibly the finest performance of his career to date when successful here a year ago.
Now he’s long odds-on to complete the Cheltenham-Punchestown two-mile double for a second time and join some rare company.
His former stable companion Un De Sceaux won this back-to-back in 2018-19 but the previous horse to manage it was Klairon Davis in 1996-97.
Energumene may not yet have quite captured the public imagination like previous two-mile champions such as Moscow Flyer.
The latter famously won this in 2004 but it was his sole victory in the race. Energumene is widely expected to top that and set a Mullins tone for the week ahead
