From betting being suspended by some firms on the British trainers’ championship after Cheltenham, Willie Mullins is now a heavy odds-on favourite to retain the cross-channel crown.
A stunning Randox Aintree Grand National outcome, where Nick Rockett led home his stable companions I Am Maximus and Grangeclare West for a Mullins clean sweep, has transformed the championship table.
Dan Skelton started Aintree almost ‘double scores’ ahead of his Irish rival with nearly £2.8 million (€3.3 million) in the bag.
However, a massively successful Aintree festival overall, where Mullins won eight races, including a handful of Grade Ones, as well as the Topham, has catapulted him to a prize money total for the season of £2,921,513 (over €3.4 million) in Britain this season.
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That’s a tiny deficit behind Skelton’s £3,043,513 and Mullins has pledged a repeat of his willingness last year to send runners anywhere in Britain before the campaign ends in Sandown later this month.
“We’ll see you in Ayr, Perth, Carlisle, wherever there is a race meeting between now and Sandown. We’ll give it a good crack,” he promised after Saturday’s big race.
The next lucrative cross-channel dates are at Ayr this Saturday for the Coral Scottish Grand National programme. Mullins’s 2024 winner MacDermott is among 13 entries he has in the marathon contest, which last year provided a first Irish winner since 1869.
The next confirmation stage for Ayr is on Monday and Mullins also has eight options currently left in the Scottish Champion Hurdle.
It’s a scenario that has some firms making the Irishman as low as 1-3 favourite to keep the British crown. In 2024 he was the first Irish-based trainer to win it since Vincent O’Brien 70 years previously when the contest went down to the final day at Sandown.
Nevertheless, Skelton is determined to maintain his lead which has been wiped out so spectacularly and so fast.
“We’re improving but so is he. He’s got all those horses, and I was watching them jump the last in the National and all five were his. What can you say – that’s just where he is at the moment,” the Englishman reported.
“I’m not going to give up, but I’m definitely not going to be running the wrong horses, and we’ll only run the right ones. I’m sure he’ll go and sweep the floor, that was his tactic last year when he ran loads in those valuable races and it got him across the line,” he added.
It was the Grand National result, though, that prompted unparalleled emotional scenes from the figure who is long since assured a 19th trainers’ title in Ireland.
“When I saw Patrick going so well three out I thought, this could happen, this could happen and then when it did happen I think I just broke down completely. I don’t think I’m ever going to have a day like this again,” Mullins admitted.
It was a father and son victory that echoed Papillon’s success in 2000 for Ruby and Ted Walsh and Bobbyjo a year earlier for Paul and Tommy Carberry.
