RACING:CHAMPION TRAINER Willie Mullins enjoyed a momentous afternoon at Punchestown yesterday when winning five of the six races at accumulated odds of almost 952 to 1.
Only Kerb Appeal’s third placing in the handicap hurdle prevented Mullins going through the card but that couldn’t dilute his satisfaction at the most successful single day of an illustrious career.
“That’s fantastic. Even over two meetings we’ve never got near five. The horses seem to be in great order,” he said after taking full advantage of the meeting going ahead after a morning inspection.
The €20,000-plus experiment of covering the track with polythene was an unqualified success as while the cross-country race, where the track was uncovered, fell victim to frost, the hurdles and chase courses were perfectly raceable.
“If we hadn’t covered, it’s doubtful we’d have raced. It definitely wouldn’t have been safe enough for the good horses,” the course manager, Richie Galway said.
Mullins took full advantage and won five of the six remaining races, headed by Golden Silver’s Tied Cottage success and also with another Grade Two victory for Gagewell Flyer in the Moscow Flyer Novice Hurdle.
Cheltenham’s Neptune Investment Management Novices’ Hurdle beckons for Gagewell Flyer who held off his stable companion Earlson Gray by a rapidly diminishing neck in the two-mile event. “I thought he might win, and felt he was my best chance of a winner today. I ran him here to give him more experience of jumping at a faster pace and that will do him now before Cheltenham,” Mullins said.
“The other horse can’t run in a maiden because he’s won a chase but we’ll find something for him too.”
Cheltenham is also on the radar for Raptor who was three lengths too good for Westmeath in the two-and-a-half-mile maiden hurdle. “I think he deserves an Albert Bartlett entry. He was only getting going at two and a half. We bought him in France as a chaser and he’s an out-and-out stayer,” Mullins reported.
“I saw him in the parade ring in France and I thought he was a beautiful horse. At the same time, my wife, Jackie, saw him on the television and rang to ask me what the beautiful grey horse was, so we ended up buying him,” he added.
Stamina is already Some Target’s strongpoint as he proved with a battling defeat of Noble Concorde in what was his first handicap start in the three-and-a-half-mile Grand National Trial.
The Irish National on Easter Monday could be an option for Some Target but Mullins is initially looking to Cheltenham’s four-mile National Hunt Chase.
“He’s in the Jewson too, but I imagine the four mile will be his target,” he said after Some Target survived a stewards’ inquiry into crossing the runner-up on the run-in.
Paul Townend rode all four Mullins winners in the professional races but the trainer’s son, Patrick, was on board the newcomer Celtic Folklore when he made all in the bumper.
It was Co Cork trainer Robert Tyner who prevented a complete Groundhog Day atmosphere when Square Sphere beat off the favourite Rivage D’Or in the three-mile handicap hurdle, with Mullins’s Kerb Appeal “only” third.
“It’s been a fantastic day. I thought Paul (Townend) was fantastic on the four winners he rode and I’m just delighted with the way it has turned out,” Mullins said.