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2 from 3 of Quevega’s offspring are Graded performers. An excellent return for any broodmare, surely?
Big Bucks was a box walking crib chewer sort of horse so I’d assume he wasn’t the easiest to train and wouldn’t have travelled well. I do now, however, look back on the years when Nicholls dominated the big races in a new light and with a lot more admiration for the way he brought horses back eg Kauto Star and Denman and won with them year after year. Something, of course, that Nicky Henderson has been doing for decades. If I’m around for a few more years I suppose I’ll think the same about Mullins.
Mullins is an absolute genius and I am thoroughly in awe of what he has , and is , achieving.
His charges seem to run against each other fairly , and in true competition.
Due to the aforementioned fact , coupled with the fact that I rarely bet nowadays , I don’t find his domination to be boring , just something to be amazed by.Sport is supposed to be about competition. If anyone thinks one trainer winning all the 8 Grade 1s is good for the health of any sport trying to attract a new audience then they have their head firmly planted in the sand.
Do we want a Max Verstappen Red Bull win every race type of domination? F1 has become one of the most boring and predictable sports out there.
Willie Mullins comes across as a very decent human being but I think even he must know that other trainers can’t compete with his wealthy patrons sending him all the best bred bloodstock. Eventually they will leave the game and where will we be then?
Fair enough Ruby – to be honest, I do also think Facile Vega had a lofty reputation placed on him from the very start after some visually impressive bumper wins, just goes to show how jumping obstacles can be a great leveller.
Befair – That is true but being that he did run in most (if not all) of the usual staying hurdles races enroute to Cheltenham, I am not holding that as a big negative against him…….would have been nice to see it just once though at Punchestown.
Big Buck’s never came to Punchestown – well there’s a clue in his career record that probably explains that. When a horse runs 40 times in his career and 39 of those races are on left handed tracks, seems likely that his trainers had spotted what he did best.
At least he remembers the start, being Paddy Mullins’ son must have helped but he didn’t get it all on a plate:
When asked to comment on the secret behind his remarkable ascent, Mullins replied: “I think just perseverance.
“I remember coming out of Leopardstown at Christmas and maybe having a good runner in a bumper or a handicap but never any runners in the graded races and thinking how do we up our game and then we were lucky to win at Cheltenham with Tourist Attraction and then we had Whither Or Which which we owned ourselves.
“I said to Jackie, everyone is trying to buy the horses if we sell them we’re just going to be selling trainers and I said if I think it’s a real one we’ll keep them and try and sell them into the yard.
“We took a lot less money and money was scarce at the time but it paid off; so we put our own money down, we took a chance and it paid off. We just kept taking a gamble I suppose but we’re lucky, good owners we’ve had over the years, fantastic people.
“Lots of uncompetitive racing, masquerading as Gd1s……”.
Agree, there are far too many Grade 1s now and not enough horses to run in them.
Bring back the days when good horses had to run in handicaps and give away weight. Far more interesting than watching a 1/3 chance beat the same old horses.
Nice spot….although he easily won the Long Walk at Ascot on his only try right handed so I wonder if it was ever an actual issue (how would they really know if he only went that way once?) or just that the race programme that fit his season best just happened to all be on left handed courses?
“2 from 3 of Quevega’s offspring are Graded performers. An excellent return for any broodmare, surely?”
Willie actually played a blinder there. Get fillies, which are cheaper, and get known as a trainer good with mares at a time when the mares’ programme was developing and you could get some big but easier wins on the board to attract and keep people who will also send geldings. When the mares retire and go to fabby expensive stallions, hey presto a few years later you get sent their progeny: Mystical Power, Baby Kate and Quevega’s kids.
I think Gordon Elliott has copped on to this and cultivated the relationship with the Morans, who have had some good mares with him and bought Apples Jade too I think.
Mat Chapman made the same point about G1s on ITV today – everyone knows that there is too many fixtures and too many chances for the top horses to swerve each other but the BHA don’t have the teeth to make the drastic (or any) changes to the programme that are required.
Small field in the G1s are ok as long as it is the top horses meeting each other in them – you go back to the golden era of hurdling when the likes of Comedy of Errors/Lanzarote/Night Nurse/Monksfield/Sea Pigeon/Birds Nest regularly clashed against each other (pre & post Champion Hurdle) in races like the Fighting Fifth/Christmas/Bula/Welsh & Scottish Champion Hurdles and they were by and large small select fields.
The 1975 Fighting Fifth for instance had just 4 runners where Night Nurse beat Comedy of Errors and Sea Pigeon.
Just a few small stats:
8 G1 races with a total of 48 runners (avg. 6 per race) – 29 of them trained by WP Mullins – prize 1.3 million Euros. Only 19 horses from other stables are entered over eight different G1s….
These are decent opportunities for owners, but I guess they’re all somehow intimidated by the Mullins powerhouse. Not running against decent G1 performers also keeps your rating down a bit more, if you’re just interested in handicaps.
I wonder how many of the Caldwell horses will be bought and transferred in to Mullins’ stable?
I suppose it helps having so many sons and relatives riding the horses at home and in races because of the valuable feed back. Then again most stables are family affairs.
As has been mentioned previously, Willie’s true genius lies in the sourcing of his horses. He has the best recruitment network and has a stranglehold on the best French imports in particular. The French are the best source of NH horses at the moment which is a problem that the UK and Ireland need to get to grips with. He is also the best trainer and seems a genuinely decent man too. I find it hard to begrudge his success given he races his horses on their merits and never seems to ‘fix’ the results. It’s up to his competitors to do better and think outside the box rather than trying, in vein, to copy.
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