Skip to main content

Willie Mullins at his yard in Bagenalstown, Co. Carlow. (Image: Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Morgan Treacy)

Willie Mullins is the greatest trainer in the history of National Hunt but what is the secret to his success? We visited him at his Carlow home to find out.

ByGarry Doyle
08:00, 30 NOV 2024

November is Willie Mullins’ favourite month. Shortened days, foggy weather, mist in the air, horses on the gallops.

He surrounds himself with champions and with hope. Galopin Des Champs trots past, seventh in a line of 21 horses, ridden by Paul Townend, one of the world’s best.

One by one, the jockeys ahead of Townend say the name of their rides to Mullins and let him know how much work they’ve put in that day.

First is Energumene. “One big,” his jockey says, which, in everyday language, means he has cantered one lap at full pace around Mullins’ mile-long gallop. It’s For Me comes next, a novice chaser, the name also announced by his jockey to Mullins. “Two big,” he says.

Mullins nods, registering the detail in his head, awaiting the next jockey and the next horse. This one is called Impaire Et Passe, another that did not go novice chasing last year but which Mullins thinks can become a superb two-miler. “Himself, Ballyburn, It’s For Me, as the season goes ahead we’ll let them pick the distance themselves. They’ll go to Aintree or Fairyhouse later,” Mullins says.

And then after Jasmin De Vaux and High Class Hero comes Galopin Des Champs, a two-times Cheltenham Gold Cup winner, a gelding that needs no introduction. And yet Townend acts as MC and treats the most famous horse in National Hunt the same as the novices in front of him.

Listening in and watching on is the most successful trainer in the National Hunt game. Willie Mullins is 68 now, three years older than his father, Paddy, was when he first became champion trainer back in the 1980s.

So much of his father, a Kilkenny man, lives on in his eldest son.

“Working with my dad,” he once said, “you learned to get on with the job, that was the thing about him. When I think of what we trained on before we had the all-weather gallops – we just picked out the best field we could find and that was it. It never worried him. You did what you had to do. If he thought he had a horse good enough, he wasn’t afraid to take on the best.

“A lot of people who have a good horse are afraid to get beaten. Not my father.”

Nor his son. Last weekend Galopin Des Champs lost out to Fact To File, another horse in the Mullins yard. Yet his trainer isn’t worried. It’s November, after all and a trainer knows that panicking about a horse’s form in November is a bit like Father Christmas getting neurotic about the colour of Rudolph’s nose in September.

And Willie Mullins isn’t just a good trainer, but the best, something his father, Paddy, predicted as far back as 1990 when he spoke to The Sunday Tribune’s David Walsh.

Willie was 34 at the time, just three years into training, still waiting for his first winner at Cheltenham.

He has 103 to his name now as well as two English Grand Nationals, two King George VIs, and among many other things, an 18-time Irish National Hunt Champion trainer.

Standing in his kitchen, in a homely, old-fashioned farmhouse, Mullins leans against the range and gestures with his eyes to a plate of smoked salmon sandwiches. “Tea or coffee?” his logistics expert, Grainne, asks.

A bowl of chocolates is passed around. Yet this is no ordinary bowl. It is the trophy Mullins won last year when he became Britain’s champion trainer. By this stage of his life, he hasn’t just eclipsed his father – who won a Gold Cup, a Champion Hurdle, a Champion Stakes and four Irish Grand Nationals – but everyone.

In training terms, he is racing’s equivalent of Alex Ferguson, hungry and talented at the start, the builder of a brilliant team, then capable of reenergising himself on an annual basis and improving as he got older.

“For me a champion trainer, when I was growing up, was always older, always in the second half of their life whereas in England they were always looking to make someone a champion trainer at 32 or 33. You know I only got my license at 30 and therefore you are only going to be better at your job later in life.

“And I think it is a huge thing if you have the appetite to keep at it because of all the knowledge you have learned over the years. Experience is huge in this game and it is huge in riders but unfortunately in riders, from the time they get to 36, 37, they tend to be married with kids and their focus is there and they are just not the same.

“I love riders with experience.”

His father was the same. Paddy Mullins never tired of horses nor of life, understanding the little things that turned a prospect into a winner.

“Dad was a patient man,” Mullins says. “I didn’t think I learned that from him.

“When he made certain decisions, like any young lad, I thought, ‘why are we doing that?’

“But then, as I got older, I surprised myself with the patience we had with horses. I probably frustrated a lot of owners (earlier in his career) and that is why I am so lucky with the owners I have now that they buy into the patience and wait. That is a huge thing in a horse’s life for someone to wait for the horse to come along rather than forcing the horse.”

As he speaks, his two dogs, Harriet and Munch, mooch around, looking for discarded scraps from the sandwiches.

Patrick, his son, then comes into the kitchen.

“That man still talking,” he says endearingly, smiling at his father.

Like Willie, Patrick was named after his grandfather. Like Willie, he is uncommonly tall for a jockey. And it is not just his height he inherited from his father. That love of racing is in the blood.

“The reason we still do this is because we have to earn a living,” Mullins senior says. “That is number one. And the other thing is that the maintenance of this place costs a huge amount of money, so you have got to actually win to pay for the upkeep.

“But on top of all that, I am also very competitive. You set out to be the best that you can be. And okay, now we are there. But this place does not have private backers. It is me and Jackie (his wife) and Patrick and that’s it; the place has got to earn its keep.

“I still have a desire to train good horses.

“Everyone assumes we are going to have 10 or 12 grade one horses as well but we don’t know. I have named horses that could be top notch but how many of them will be? I don’t know.

“When I look at the likes of Al Boum Photo and when you see Fact De File coming through, you are always afraid that if one or two of (your star horses) go down then where are the next ones going to come from?

“That is my worry. I am still competitive.”

Sometimes soft, sometimes tough.

“It depends on who you are talking to,” he says. “My nephew Danny is well used to me and it rubs off him like water off a duck. I find that people know when something goes wrong; so you don’t need to say it.”

The results have done the talking for him.