The most successful trainer in Cheltenham Festival history is eyeing more major prizes on the Flat – not least via Melbourne Cup favourite Vauban. Interview by JA McGrath
Ireland: With over 200 horses in training, Willie Mullins is an unstoppable force in jump racing in his native Ireland and Britain.
He is the most successful trainer ever at the Cheltenham Festival – and the scale of his operation at Closutton in 
County Carlow can be gauged by the fact he sent as many as 80 horses to jump racing’s Olympics in March this year.
However, Mullins has also developed a lucrative sideline on the Flat – both in Europe and further afield. The National Hunt legend likes to buy dual-purpose horses, those with an abundance of ability on the Flat but also with the scope and potential to make it over hurdles.
He has sourced hundreds of this type over the years, the most recent example being the three-year-old Ethical Diamond, who went under the hammer at the Tattersalls July Sales for 320,000 guineas (approx. $430,000) despite having won a mere Limerick maiden on his third outing.
As such, these are busy times for Mullins, for not only has he been assembling formidable teams for the ever-popular summer racing festivals in Ireland, he also has aspirations for some of Flat racing’s biggest targets.
Among them is French recruit Absurde, being readied for a crack at the Skybet Ebor Handicap – Europe’s richest handicap over 1m 6f at York on August 26 – while he is also laying the foundations for an extended campaign for Vauban, the exciting stayer who romped home by 7½ lengths in the Copper Horse Handicap under Ryan Moore at Royal Ascot in June.
Sporting the famous pink-and-green silks of leading jumps owner Rich Ricci, the five-year-old is an accomplished performer over hurdles, coming fourth in the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham in March. But he is also now 10-1 favourite for the Melbourne Cup at Flemington in Australia on November 7 – a race in which Mullins went close with Max Dynamite, second in 2015 and third in 2017.
Vauban seemed to relish his first piece work since Ascot – with his gallops partner Virginie Bascop in the saddle – when I recently visited Mullins’s stable south east of Dublin. “Vauban is very good,” the trainer enthuses. “He has got over Ascot well, and now we will find the right programme to get him to Melbourne.”
Mullins is adamant he is not altering his strategy when buying new horses but there have certainly been changes elsewhere that have influenced his approach.
The expansion of the racing calendar in the Middle East – particularly Saudi Arabia and Bahrain – to include more luc
rative staying races has had a direct bearing on his modus operandi when it comes to buying.
Double-edged sword
Mind you, this is effectively a double-edged sword. Huge prize-money available, yes, but hence more interest in the type of horse needed to do the job.
“We are paying the same amount of attention to the Flat,” Mullins insists “But we have less opportunity [to buy] with the Middle East opening up new staying races. The type of we used to buy, horses like Thomas Hobson and Max Dynamite, are being bought by the Australians, and now by the Middle East.
“There is less opportunity for us to get our hands on a highly-rated Flat horse to go jumping, and then back to the Flat. We find that we are just being priced out of the market. But we did buy Ethical Diamond, who is a young horse with a lot of improvement in him. He could be good enough.”
Mullins has regularly been able to find horses for the important staying Flat races and is often in the really big ones.
“We do what we do,” he says. “We always try to buy those dual-purpose horses, and if one of them is good enough to be a Melbourne Cup horse or an Ascot Gold Cup horse that is a bonus.
‘Probably the best race we could win’
“We don’t have the type who will win a Breeders’ Cup,” he goes on. “But to win a Melbourne Cup, a world-class race is possible.
“It’s probably the best race we could win, maybe after the Ascot Gold Cup. We were second in the Gold Cup with Simenon in 2013, beaten a neck by the Queen’s horse Estimate. Maybe one year we will win one or the other.”
The global horizon remains a fascination for the trainer – and an enticing challenge. Mullins has always been keen to have runners in America, for example, and he sent Scaramanga, raced by prominent owner Malcolm Denmark, to Nashville for the G1 Iroquois Hurdle at Percy Warner Park in May.
The eight-year-old won by 3¼ lengths under Paul Townend. “He goes on fast ground and we will send him back to the States for the American Grand National Hurdle at Far Hills in the autumn,” Mullins reports.
Jump racing priority
Jump racing in Ireland and Britain always remains the priority, the trainer’s ambition on the Flat, particularly internationally, shows no signs of dimming. “We try to pick our spots and hope to land one,” he points out.
“We were lucky enough in Australia with True Self, who won two Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Flemington after being balloted out of the Melbourne Cup twice at the 11th hour.
“And possibly that was all for luck because maybe the Melbourne Cup might have been a little too far for her.” She also won the $1m Neom Turf Cup over 1m2f on the Saudi Cup undercard in 2021.
Runaway Royal Ascot winner Vauban might even become Mullins’s biggest money-earner for the year. Certainly, that will be the case if he lands the A$4,725,000 first prize for the winner of Australia’s biggest race.
“I think Vauban is the best opportunity I’ve had to win the Melbourne Cup since Max Dynamite,” he says. “He could be better than Max – I think he’s still improving. We think he’s got a big enough engine to be a big player.”
Vauban was bought out of the stable of French trainer Philippe Decouz after winning two of his four starts on the Flat, which included a Listed contest over 1m4f at Vichy.
For Mullins, the gelding has run eight times over hurdles, for three wins, including the Triumph Hurdle at Cheltenham, and once on the Flat, for his demolition job in the Copper Horse.
There are several options open to Vauban to qualify for the Melbourne Cup – he needs to be placed in the first three in a Listed race or better, over 1m4f or or more. Those options are the G3 Ballyroan Stakes at Naas [Aug 7], the G3 Ballycullen Stakes [Aug 20] or the G2 Lonsdale Cup at York’s Ebor meeting [Aug 25].
As a safety net, there is also Deauville’s G2 Prix Kergolay [Aug 20] and the G1 Irish St Leger at The Curragh [Sept 10] – a Classic that fell to Mullins in 2016 with a previous Cheltenham-winning hurdler in Wicklow Brave.
A placing in any one of the aforementioned races would see Vauban satisfying all qualification clauses; Melbourne Cup entries close on Sept 5, with handicaps released on Sept 19.
Vauban looked bright in himself and seemed to enjoy his leg stretch, accompanied by a big team of stablemates in second lot. They were working on Mullins’s all-weather gallop, a woodchip surface, deeper than most, that clearly lays the foundations of stamina so essential to excel in any staying contest.
Royal Ascot one-two
The way Vauban accelerated away from the field at Royal Ascot in June was exciting – and Mullins also trained second-placed Absurde, a recruit off the Flat in France formerly owned by the Wertheimer family.
The trainer also hopes that Absurde can make his mark in Australia, though he admits he is looking a long way into the future with that plan,
“He’s also a novice hurdler, and this is an important year for him because of that,” he says. “But at the same time, I am keeping in the back of my mind his Flat campaign. We will give him another run on the Flat with a view to Melbourne, looking at the Ebor and maybe the Irish St Leger.
“I will enter him for Melbourne this year to get his name on the sheet, though he’s more a Melbourne horse for next year. He could be a very good novice hurdler, good enough to go to Cheltenham. You only get one opportunity at that.”
Such international ambitions are nothing new to the pioneering training legend over jumps, who has long since fielded prominent runners at Auteuil in France, where he is a five-time winner of the Grand Course de Haies (French Champion Hurdle). He also pulled off a famous Japanese triumph with Blackstairmountain in the 2013 Nakayama Grand Jump.
Though Mullins claims he is paying exactly the same amount of attention to the Flat as he ever did – and no more than that – finding high-class dual-purpose horses must inevitably see him on Flat racing’s international stage for years to come. Including at Melbourne on the first Tuesday in November.
• Visit the Willie Mullins website
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