Willie Mullins is readying a team of up to 80 horses for next week’s Cheltenham Festival and the record-breaking trainer is just 9-4 to outscore Britain on his own.
Cross-channel eyes can be forgiven for looking anxiously across the water at the waves of Mullins runners about to hit Prestbury Park ahead of the biggest week of the racing year.
Mullins’s 2024 haul of nine winners equalled the whole home tally and Boylesports go jut 9-4 about the Irishman trumping them this time. He had a record 10 winners in 2022.
That firm reckons Mullins has 13 favourites for the 28 races up for grabs next week, including Galopin Des Champs, who is odds-on to complete a Cheltenham Gold Cup hat-trick.
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Mullins wasn’t represented in just one festival contest a year ago and saddled 73 runners in all. It included a massive eight-strong team in the Weathebys Champion Bumper when Jasmin De Vaux notched a landmark 100th festival success. Mullins has 103 festival winners in all.
Ante-post punters are still trying to tease out Mullins’s likely plans for star mare Lossiemouth who has day one options in both the Champion Hurdle and the Mares' Hurdle. Final declarations for Tuesday are on Sunday.
Mullins’s chaser Fact To File hardened to 6-4 favourite for the Ryanair after featuring among a dozen acceptors for the race at Friday’s latest acceptance stage. Fact To File’s alternative is to try his luck against Galopin Des Champs again in the Gold Cup.
A notable absentee from the Ryanair is Jimmy Mangan’s Spillane’s Tower, and as expected Banbridge’s connections have opted to go down the Gold Cup route. The Mullins team have left both Gaelic Warrior and the former two-mile Champion Chase winer Eneregumene in the mix.
Teahupoo is a warm favourite to retain his Stayers' Hurdle crown, although up to 19 potential opponents could take him on next week.
Ground conditions at Cheltenham are largely good to soft after selective watering began at the track on Thursday.
“Mainly yesterday was on the New Course, a little bit on the Old, but mainly on the New, and we’ll continue to monitor conditions and irrigate accordingly,” clerk of the course Jon Pullin reported.
“We’re largely good to soft. There are one or two areas now that would be on the quicker side of that, so nearer good ground, and there the areas in the next few hours where we’ll have irrigated and hopefully got us back to that good to soft position.
“Good to soft is where we would like to start, that’s been the position here at the festival now for a number of years, to start a four-day festival on anything quicker comes with its challenges, so we’d like to start on good to soft ground,” he added.
A warm weekend weather outlook means watering is set to continue ahead of a largely dry forecast for the week ahead.
“What we wouldn’t want it to do is go any quicker than good ground, so we’d need to be mindful of that. But looking at the forecast I don’t see that being an issue. We’ve got a very warm weekend coming with temperatures around 16 and 17 degrees on Saturday and Sunday with lots of bright sunshine,” Pullin said.
“But then it does turn a lot cooler next week and daytime temperatures through the week are seven, eight degrees in the main and we’re now looking at some overnight frosts as well,” Pullin said.
Before all that Mullins has 10 runners left over for this weekend’s action and Batman Girac will do a cross-channel recce on Saturday in Sandown’s Betfair Imperial Cup.
The sponsors are offering a £100,000 bonus (about €120,000) to the winner of Saturday’s contest going on to win any race at Cheltenham. Batman Girac holds a County Hurdle entry at the festival. JJ Slevin takes the mount on the sole Irish challenger.
Significantly, Mullins’s No 1 jockey Paul Townend has a single weekend ride, the former top-class bumper performer Redemption Day in Sunday’s Naas opener.
It leaves Danny Mullins to take over on the Royal Ascot winner Belloccio who goes in the Grade Three Bar One Kingsfurze Hurdle and the Beginners' Chase candidate Olympic Man.
Included in the Kingsfurze is one horse swimming against the cross-channel tide as Olly Murphy’s Pleasington tries his luck in Ireland. Keith Donoghue teams up with the raider who has won his last two starts at Leicester and Lingfield.
Sunday’s feature is the €100,000 Leinster National where the last two winners, Hartur D’arc and Espanito Bello, try to win the race again.
Fans of Bambino Fever’s festival bumper chance will also be hoping Switch From Diesel delivers a form boost in the finale. She was runner-up in the Grade Two bumper at the Dublin Racing Festival.
