Willie Mullins smashed his own prizemoney record at Punchestown on Thursday when Klassical Dream led home a big race one-two for the champion trainer.
A €237,000 haul collected by Klassical Dream and his stable companion Asterion Forlonge in the Ladbrokes Champion Hurdle catapulted Mullins past the €6.2 million he secured in the 2018-19 Irish jumps season.
Short of that by just over 40 grand at the start of the day, the first leg of an eventual 35-1 four-timer was Dinoblue. But it was Klassical Dream that proved just the ticket to yet another new benchmark as the horse completed a three-in-a-row in the Stayers feature to maintain his own spotless festival career record of four Grade One victories.
Once again, Paul Townend showed superb sangfroid to bring his famously combustible partner from the rear of the field and beat Asterion Forlonge by half a length. The Cheltenham and Aintree winner Sire Du Berlais was a neck back in third.
Willie Mullins set to take wraps off some of his biggest stars at Punchestown
Fact To File could head formidable JP McManus team into John Durkan test
Top amateur Derek O’Connor to team up with Fastorslow for John Durkan Chase at Punchestown
Stuzzikini puts seal on Gordon Elliott dominance with 20-1 Troytown success
With a couple of days of the campaign left, Mullins, who earlier this month broke another old record by passing 212 winners in a single Irish season, can pass €7 million in a single domestic campaign before close of business on Saturday evening. He’s currently on over €6.6 million.
If it is a figure that once would have seemed unimaginable, then the scale of the 66-year-old’s dominance of the sport would also have been similarly inconceivable. He has scooped almost €2 million in Britain this season to boot.
With Irish racing’s finances in the spotlight once again this week, his new benchmark represents a considerable slice of the prizemoney on offer on the flat and over jumps in Ireland which this year is a record €68.6 million.
How that’s comprised can be gauged by 2022 figures when owners supplied 25 per cent of the prizemoney pot, sponsors produced nine per cent, the European Breeders Fund generated four per cent, while the balance (62 per cent) came from Horse Racing Ireland.
Thursday’s four-timer included the other Grade One with the odds-on El Fabiolo, although Mullins was almost nonplussed to be told of his latest record.
“Amazement,” was his initial reaction. “It’s not something we set out to do. We set out to have winners and hopefully not make fools of ourselves.
“We didn’t dream it was going to be this sort of year, especially early in the season when ground is firm, and horses are getting injured. You’re thinking, ‘let’s get to Christmas, nice ground to run nice horses on.’ And it all came together,” he said.
“That’s the way we try and plan it. You want your best form for the second half of the season. That’s when the medals are won,” Mullins added.
Rather than statistics it was the latest in a series of vintage Townend spins that had Mullins singing the champion jockey’s praises.
“Top drawer, but he’s been doing it all season,” he said. “He was so cool on him out the back. The moment Klassical Dream got a bit of daylight you could see he locked on and I thought ‘Paul’s just got to deliver him at the right time’ and he’s been doing that all year, delivering them at the right time.”
Klassical Dream will have to successfully return in 2024 to equal Quevega’s record in the race, although his more immediate target could be in Paris and an attempt to go one better than his second in last year’s French Champion Hurdle at Auteuil.
El Fabiolo’s future is crammed with any number of options after the season’s outstanding novice maintained his unbeaten record over fences in the Barberstown Castle Novice Chase.
Against a trio of opponents, including a pair of stable companions, he looked to have little more than a lucrative school to beat Dysart Dynamo by 11 lengths.
He immediately usurped his stable companion Energumene in some lists as a 6-4 favourite for next year’s Queen Mother Champion Chase.
“You couldn’t get any better. I was worried had Danny [Mullins on Dysart Dynamo] stolen a march, but Paul said when he pulled his fellah out and just said, ‘go’, he lit up underneath him and it was like going up a gear. It was very easy,” Mullins said.
“Even though Danny was going a hell of a good gallop on Dysart Dynamo, who does go a good gallop, Paul felt he might have been going too steady for him.
“When a jockey comes out and says that to you, that sounds awesome,” he added.
Mullins, who will be crowned champion trainer for a 17th time on Saturday, wound up securing just shy of €400,000 on Thursday alone. He’s on 11 winners for the week, eight shy of his best-ever Punchestown with two days to go.
Separately, despite having finished runner-up here on Tuesday, Vital Island made light of a quick turnaround to land Ireland’s longest race, the Mongey La Touche Cup, over the spectacular banks course.
The first cross-channel success of the week came when Dorset-based Anthony Honeyball saddled Kilbeg King to land the three-mile handicap hurdle. The winner’s rider Aidan Coleman picked up a three-day suspension.
Thursday’s attendance of 17,783 was substantially down on the corresponding 2022 figure of 21,356. Track officials suspect a wet overnight weather forecast might have had an impact.
“The forecast was dire – and it turned out grand, [but] I’d say people had their decisions made,” said a spokesperson.
