This weekend’s €2 million Dublin Racing Festival is shaping into a potential ‘Willie Mullins Show’ topped by Galopin Des Champs in Saturday’s featured Paddy Power Irish Gold Cup.
The reigning Cheltenham Gold Cup champion is one of just a handful of entries left in the €250,000 highlight at Leopardstown after Tuesday’s latest acceptance stage.
His stable companion State Man will also have a maximum of only four opponents in Sunday’s €200,000 Chanelle Irish Champion Hurdle. Another Mullins star, El Fabiolo, dominates the Ladbrokes Dublin Chase on the same day.
Mullins has made 68 initial entries in all over the two days and could be represented in all 15 races up for grabs. The champion jumps trainer has almost 30 per cent of all entries currently in the DRF. Mullins won eight races in 2023 and has had 38 victories so far in the festival’s six-year history.
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Final declarations for Saturday’s action will take place on Thursday with officials’ fingers likely to be kept tightly crossed that Fastorslow lines up against Galopin Des Champs.
Trainer Martin Brassil has said the Gold Cup is Fastorslow’s number one option, although the horse is also among the handful of entries left in against El Fabiolo over two miles a day later.
A clash between Galopin Des Champs and Fastorslow would be the festival’s headline act. The pair have met three times with Brassil’s runner triumphant on the last two occasions, including in November’s Durkan Chase at Punchestown.
Fastorslow hasn’t been seen in action since and skipped Leopardstown’s Savills Chase over Christmas due to testing ground conditions.
Galopin Des Champs ultimately won that contest with an outstanding defeat of Gerri Colombe and his own stable companion Capodanno, who scored last weekend in Cheltenham’s Cotswold Chase.
The pair dominate the top of betting lists for Cheltenham’s Blue Riband in just over six weeks’ time.
As expected, Gerri Colombe has been taken out of Saturday’s feature with Gordon Elliott opting to leave in both Coko Beach and the 2022 winner Conflated instead.
Mullins has also given the Irish Grand National winner I Am Maximus the Irish Gold Cup option as he chases what would be a record-extending 13th success in the race.
The sport’s dominant figure has overwhelming firepower throughout the weekend’s eight Grade One races. Barry Connell’s Marine Nationale in Saturday’s Goffs Arkle is the only non-Mullins ante-post favourite among the top-flight contests.
Mullins has eight of the 13 horses left in the McCann Fitzgerald Spring Juvenile Hurdle and the same ratio applies to Sunday’s Ladbrokes Novice Chase. El Fabiolo is backed up by a trio of stable companions, while six of the nine still in the mix for Saturday’s opener are from Closutton.
It is a prodigious display of strength in depth that extends to the support events too, although Henn See does cut an unusually solitary figure in Saturday’s €100,000 Ryanair Handicap Chase.
Marine Nationale maintains his position as an odds-on Arkle favourite but the possibility of a mouthwatering clash with one of Mullins’s star novices, Gaelic Warrior, still exists.
The latter is also entered for Sunday’s novice chase over almost 2½ miles, although Fact To File and Grangeclare West already give Mullins a firm grip on that contest.
State Man is a 1-4 favourite to repeat last year’s success in the Irish Champion Hurdle where he is set to meet Bob Olinger for the first time. The latter has come back to something like his outstanding novice form but this represents the biggest challenge to date for such an enigmatic performer.
Ground conditions at Leopardstown are currently soft on the chase course and heavy over hurdles with a mainly dry outlook for the week ahead.
Elsewhere, star flat jockey Dylan Browne McMonagle rode 11 winners during a brief spell in Australia and is back in action with six rides at Dundalk on Wednesday afternoon.
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