Willie Mullins has sent more than 800 horses to Cheltenham over the last quarter of a century, many of which were hot favourites with millions riding on their chance, and welcomed back nearly 100 as winners at the Festival. Yet he still said after winning his third Gold Cup with Galopin Des Champs here on Friday that he had felt more pressure both before and during the race than at any stage of his long career.
On the face of it, that might seem surprising, as Galopin Des Champs set off as the 7-5 favourite and eventually came home with a comfortable seven-length winning margin over Bravemansgame. But that tells only a fraction of the story of a race that gripped the attention from first to last.
Throughout the opening circuit, Paul Townend, the winner’s jockey, was forced to sit much further away from the pace-setting Ahoy Senor than he would have preferred, as the leader, a strapping old-school steeplechaser, set out to test his rivals’ stamina from the off.
While Ahoy Senor flew his fences and kept up the gallop, Galopin Des Champs was noticeably less slick over a couple of the obstacles and while he made steady progress on the second circuit, he was still a few lengths adrift of the pace on the run to the 17th fence.
Ahoy Senor’s jumping can become a little erratic as he tires, however, and it was here that disaster struck. Ahoy Senor fell and brought down Sounds Russian, while also impeding A Plus Tard, last year’s Gold Cup winner, who was eventually pulled up before three out.
On another day, Galopin Des Champs might have been caught in the melee, but he emerged unscathed and continued to inch his way forward. There was still more drama to come, however, as he belted the third-last hard, handing a useful advantage to the two horses still in front of him, Hewick and Bravemansgame, the third-favourite.
Townend, wisely, gave him time to recover before once more starting to reel them in. Bravemansgame briefly led as Hewick crashed out at the second last, but Galopin Des Champs overhauled him with a big leap at the last and put any questions about his stamina to bed by staying on strongly all the way to the line. Twelve months on from the groan of despair that greeted his fall when clear at the last fence in the Turners Novice Chase, Galopin Des Champs ran into the raucous wall of noise that always greets a winning favourite in the Festival’s biggest race.
“That was the most pressure I’ve felt,” Mullins said. “We felt we stuck our necks out and said he is a Gold Cup horse.
“We elected him as our Gold Cup horse, whereas Al Boum Photo [his winner in 2019 and 2020] sort of happened. With this fellow, we thought he was good enough and that puts you under pressure until the actual day when it has happened.
“A lot of people were saying he is not [a Gold Cup] horse as he had too much speed and no stamina, but he had won over three miles as a novice and I was happy that if a novice can do that over hurdles at that age they are only going to get stronger as an older horse.”
Mullins tweaked the winner’s training regime after his fall here last year, and gave plenty of praise to both Townend, for his coolness under pressure, and Adam Connolly, his groom and work rider.
“Adam rides him all the time and just keeps a lid on him,” Mullins said. “We didn’t do as much fast work with him this year, it’s all about stamina and getting him to switch off. Paul has done that in the last few races as well. Paul gets him relaxed and puts him to sleep.”
Seven may well be Mullins’s lucky number, as this was just the seventh race of Galopin Des Champs’s chasing career, at the age of seven and he won by seven lengths. So much went wrong on the road to victory, meanwhile, that he is surely capable of even better form as he matures, and he is the 11-8 favourite to follow up next year.
By then, Mullins could well have become the first trainer to reach 100 Festival winners, and amid the delight of his latest triumph here, he could still pause to reflect on how far he has come.
“It is mind blowing,” he said. “I can’t comprehend the numbers I have in training at home [more than 200] and I can’t comprehend the quality of horse we have at home. It is something that we never would have dreamt of.
“Until I got my licence if someone would have said to me, you will have 60 horses every day for the rest of your training career I would have grabbed that because top trainers like Fred Winter, Fulke Walwyn, David Nicholson never had more than 60 or 65, and you were lucky if you got a Grade One horse every year, or two maybe.
“Every day I go through the barns, and I pinch myself.”
