There was a moment last weekend, Willie Mullins said after winning the Gold Cup with Galopin Des Champs on Friday, when he looked around at the senior staff in his office and said: “Is it me, or has everything gone really well with the preparations [for Cheltenham]. The ‘B’ team running at home seemed to all be winning, and the Festival team seemed to be in top order.”
It was not just him. Once again, Mullins’s horses have, with only a handful of exceptions, carried all before them this week to make their trainer the first to saddle 100 winners at this meeting, while Galopin Des Champs’s straightforward success in the Festival’s showpiece event, repeating his 2023 triumph, means that Mullins is now the only trainer to prepare two dual winners of the Gold Cup.
It is only five years since Mullins celebrated his first Gold Cup win with Al Boum Photo with an equal mix of delight and relief, after saddling no fewer than six previous runners-up. Al Boum Photo, like Galopin Des Champs, followed a year later, but was third in 2021 when attempting to become only the fifth horse to win the race three times.
If his winning performance is any guide, however, Galopin Des Champs will have an outstanding chance to succeed where Al Boum Photo failed if he returns to Cheltenham in peak form in 12 months’ time.
Paul Townend, Mullins’s stable jockey, rode the winner with immense confidence, happy to sit three wide for much of the way to keep his horse out of trouble. His jumping was all but flawless throughout and the only moment of concern for Mullins and the punters who backed Galopin Des Champs down to 10-11 favourite at the off was when Fastorslow, the third-favourite, unseated JJ Slevin on the second circuit and continued riderless near the head of the field.
Townend, though, was well placed to keep a close eye on the loose horse, and having jumped past L’Homme Presse to take the lead two out, he stayed on strongly to the line, beating Gerri Colombe by three-and-a-half lengths with Corach Rambler, last year’s Grand National winner, back in third.
Mullins’s thoughts were turning towards a treble attempt almost before horse and rider had returned to unsaddle. Golden Miller, Cottage Rake, Arkle and Best Mate are the only previous three-time winners in the history of a race that celebrated its 100th anniversary on Friday, and Galopin Des Champs is on offer at just 5-2 to be the fifth horse on the list.
“We’ll aim just to have him back here for the Gold Cup, so fingers crossed,” Mullins said. “The loose horse was the big concern, because Paul’s body language was telling me that he was travelling so well. I was wondering, is this an English or an Irish loose horse coming up, but anyway, all good.
“Al Boum Photo was a different type of horse, he was a pure galloper who would stay all day. This one has a bit of class, he can gallop all day but he still has that class to pull out a bit more at the end.”
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Mullins’s current dominance of the Cheltenham Festival in general, and its most prestigious race in particular, is that the most obvious dangers to Galopin Des Champs’s winning streak in the Gold Cup in the years ahead are also in his yard. Fact To File, the winner of a Grade One novice chase at Cheltenham on Wednesday, and Ballyburn, who ran away with a novice hurdle 40 minutes earlier, are by some way the most obvious candidates to topple the champion.
Mullins, though, has had enough experience of tough times to know that nothing is a given when you race horses over fences. “What we know from bitter experience is that trying to bring three-mile chasers back to the track every year is very difficult,” Mullins said.
“It’s a tough game, and tough for the owners, and you’d almost have to say that it’s all about losing and knowing how to lose and take it. But it would be great to get him back, and if we don’t get him back, we’ll have [horses] A, B and C.”
Nor is there any realistic chance that the ultra competitive Mullins will ever run out of targets or ambitions. He has missed out narrowly in the past in the Melbourne Cup, for instance, and a plan for a possible trip to Australia with Absurde, the winner of the County Handicap Hurdle earlier on the card, was already starting to take shape in his quicksilver mind on Friday.
One more Gold Cup success would put Mullins on a record-equalling total of five, alongside Arkle’s trainer, Tom Dreaper. Townend, meanwhile, has already equalled Pat Taaffe’s all-time record of four Gold Cups in the saddle.
It feels like it will be just a matter of time, however, before Mullins and Townend have sole ownership of both.
