Mullins remained focused despite the United FA Cup collapse
Ahead of what could be an exciting finish to the British trainers' title race at Sandown this coming weekend, Willie Mullins is not taking anything for granted.
Since his Ayr heroics, Mullins has also won at Ffos Las and Ludlow. Although he has been unlucky with six runners in the first two days of the Perth Festival, he still has a sizable lead over Dan Skelton and 14-time champion Paul Nicholls.
But despite the substantial prize money up for grabs at Sandown—the bet365 Celebration Chase and the bet365 Gold Cup each have a total prize fund of £170,000—the man who has won the Irish trainers' title 17 times shows no signs of slowing down.
Mullins stated the following at a press conference for Great British Racing: “If we can keep winning some prize-money, the others are probably going to have to win two of the feature races without any reply, but it has to be done. As we saw the other night with Manchester United against Coventry City (in the FA Cup), you can’t count your chickens. You just have to go through and keep playing – and that’s what we’re doing. Hopefully, it will work out on Saturday for us.”
On Thursday's card, Milo Lises and Feu Du Bresil also failed, with the former taking a crashing fall and the latter finishing in second place, following their Wednesday success against four defeated favourites in Perth.
Stoke The Fire is the coaches' main representative at the track in Scotland on Friday before he sends a nine-strong team to Sandown, which includes the bet365 Gold Cup trio of Nick Rockett, Minella Cocooner, and Aime Desjy, as well as Celebration Chase favourite El Fabiolo.
Mullins answered this way when asked if he had been nervous this week: “I’ve been good because of the position we’re in, especially after Ayr. We did way better in Ayr than I was expecting, I thought we might get one winner and hopefully some place money but as it turned out, we had a fantastic day. To get two photo finishes on your side in big prize-money races was just unbelievable stuff, which made this week much easier. I thought about running less horses, but I said when we’re in the position we’re in, just keep running them – and the results have been good. I know we had four favourites beaten yesterday in Perth, but there weren't any of the horses I thought were unlucky. Patrick had his two wins in Ludlow and Ffos Las, they went according to plan.”
Mullins will be eager to emphasise that he is only a small part of a well-oiled machine at his County Carlow base if he does emerge victorious at the end of play on Saturday.