While currently standing as Ireland’s most successful horse trainer, the road to the top for Willie Mullins was a slow and meticulously planned affair. After learning the ropes within the family business under the guidance of his father, Paddy Mullins, Willie eventually started out on his own track in 1988, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Since getting his start in the family business, the Country Kilkenny-born Mullins has gone on to have a spectacular career as a horse racing trainer that spans more than 30 years. He has broken numerous records along the way, and was also an excellent amateur jockey in Ireland.
It’s his affinity with and his record at the Cheltenham Festival that put Mullins in the limelight. Based out of County Carlow at his famed Closutton Stables, he has produced a string of champion thoroughbreds.
But where did it all start for Mullins, and where can his phenomenal career still take him?
His early career, from jockey to trainer
William Peter Mullins was born in 1956 into a horse-loving family. Mullins was raised in an equine world where caring for and training horses was part of daily life. His father, Paddy, was already into a career as a trainer in Ireland, and his mother, Maureen, was a successful breeder.
Unsurprisingly, the environment on the family farms set Willie Mullins on the path to stardom, but he still had the choice of precisely what this would be. As a teenager, he was already in the saddle and competing in amateur races, showing promise along the way.
His promising jockey career is often forgotten about Mullins’ journey. Still, he recorded some notable wins in his time, including the Foxhunters’ Chase at Aintree and the Champion Bumper at the Cheltenham Festival.
He had great success in Ireland and won Ireland’s amateur champion jockey title six times. Mullins was well on the way to becoming a recognised professional jockey, but there was a more considerable allure for him away from the racing, back in the stables.
The call for training
There was a more profound ambition in him to train horses. Stepping away from racing in the late 1980s, Mullins decided to put his efforts into that area, stepping into the role of assistant trainer to his father and fellow trainer Jim Bolger.
Everything was in place for him to learn, grow and take up the mantle from his father. He took charge of his first four horses in 1988, and today, the famous stables have blossomed into a vast enterprise with more than 3,000 winning horses overseen.
Embracing everything from assembling and managing the stables to getting the horses in top shape to perform took a lot of work. Respect had to be earned through competition. Perseverance got him through, and over time, his charges became increasingly recognised around the country. Wins were happening, the name of Mullins was getting out there, and his reputation was growing.
It was in the late 1990s that Willie Mullins became a household name in racing circles. He was gradually stamping his authority on Irish National Hunt racing thanks to his meticulous attention to detail in training his horses.
Success on home turf in the Irish Gold Cup coincided with him spreading his wings across the Irish Sea to the National Hunt scene in the UK. There, a flow of wins in significant events such as the Cheltenham Festival and the Aintree Grand National happened, along with other notable successes worldwide in Australia, France, Japan and the US.
The Willie Mullins family ties
Willie Mullins is married to wife Jackie, and they have one son together, Patrick. Like Willie, Jackie is a former amateur jockey. Patrick holds an amateur jockey licence as he looks to make his way to the top of the sport. He has also been an assistant trainer to Mullins Sr and will likely take over at Closutton at some point.
Danny Mullins, Willie’s nephew, is a successful jockey. Another nephew, Emmett, has followed in Willie’s footsteps and is an established, successful trainer in Ireland. It’s reported that Willie Mullins’s career earnings currently stand at more than €26m.
Recent successes
There doesn’t appear to be any slowing in the stream of talented horses from the trainer. This was highlighted by last year’s Cheltenham Festival, in which he rose to the top of the charts once again.
Mullins continues Festival form
At the 2023 Cheltenham Festival, Mullins produced six winners. The star of the Festival for Mullins was Galopin Des Champs in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. However, this came after another big success at Prestbury Park, with Energumene taking the Queen Mother Champion Chase.
Mullins closed out the 2023 Cheltenham Festival by extending his record to 94 Festival wins and putting a 10th Top Cheltenham Trainer award in his trophy cabinet.
His Cheltenham hero, Galopin Des Champs, also took the Irish Gold Cup last year and followed up with a successful title defence in early 2024. Mullins has enjoyed other major wins in Ireland in recent years, with Allaho snapping up the 2022 Punchestown Gold Cup and State Man doing a double in the Irish Champion Hurdle.
Other notable recent successes
Klassical Dream secured a run of three straight Champion Stayers Hurdle titles for Mullins from 2021 through 2023. His two-decade wait for his second King George VI Chase finally happened in 2021 when Tornado Flyer had a shocking success.
In the last three seasons (May-April), including the current 2023-24 campaign, Mullins has trained at least 200 winners in Irish jumps racing. He has also produced at least one winner in every UK National Hunt season since 2006-07.
The most prolific of his UK seasons was in 2015, when he trained 32 grade 1 winners. In that year, he produced eight at the Cheltenham Festival. In 2022/23, Willie Mullins had a record-breaking National Hunt season, with 237 winners from 832 runners.
Mullins and the Cheltenham Festival
Whenever Willie Mullins is mentioned, it inevitably leads to talk of the Cheltenham Festival. He has enjoyed many momentous moments at the meeting, but arguably, his greatest was setting a phenomenal record of 10 winners at a single Cheltenham Festival in 2022.
The first ever winner he saw get home at the Cheltenham Festival was in 1995 when Tourist Attraction landed the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle. His stock quickly rose, particularly in the Champion Hurdle, which he won four out of six times between 2011 and 2016.
Mullins has produced at least three Cheltenham Festival winners every season since 2010. While he was enjoying his tremendous run of winners year after year at the Festival, there was one race that kept evading him for a long time: the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
However, this all changed when he sent out Al Boum Photo in 2019, who wasn’t his strongest runner in the race, according to the odds. That was Kemboy, one of a contingent of four runners in the 2019 Gold Cup that Mullins had as he tried to better his six runners-up efforts. However, Kemboy and two stablemates were out before the first circuit was complete.
This left it all on Al Boum Photo’s shoulders to try to end the Gold Cup hoodoo for Mullins. Turning into the home stretch, Al Boum Photo lengthened his stride and got home by more than two lengths. The victory for Galopin Des Champs in 2023’s Gold Cup was the 94th winner by Mullins at the meeting.
Mullins lands his first Grand National win
In 2005, Mullins had a notable win in the notoriously difficult Aintree Grand National. The success in the marathon endurance test came from the popular Hedgehunter, ridden on the day by Ruby Walsh.
After looking well-placed, Hedgehunter had gone close in the previous edition, but he fell at the last fence. He had a little luck in the race when a loose horse impeded the leader, Clan Royal. This opened the door wide for Hedgehunter, who seized the opportunity and won the race by 12 lengths. Mullins got his first Irish Grand National win in 2019 with Burrows Saint.
Irish Gold Cup dominance
The Irish Gold Cup has been a happy hunting ground for Willie Mullins during his career as a trainer. His first score in the big Leopardstown race was in 1999 with Florida Pearl, who would go on to win a further three times.
Mullins won every edition of the Irish Gold Cup from 1999 to 2005. The successful title defence by Galopin Des Champs in 2024 was the 13th Irish Gold Cup winner for Mullins.
Famous horses trained by Willie Mullins
Mullins hasn’t achieved this alone, of course. His thriving stables are backed by an extensive support staff, and, of course, the horses must still do the business on the day.
Mullins has trained so many fantastic winners that it’s hard to break down the list to just the top picks. However, in the context of the horses that helped to put him on the map, here are seven of his most famous.
Hurricane Fly
Hurricane Fly was as reliable a runner as you could hope to find, and he thrived at Leopardstown. Hurricane Fly produced five stunning consecutive wins in the Irish Champion Hurdle from 2011 through 2015. Always producing his famous explosive kick at the finish, Hurricane Fly retired in 2015 with 24 wins in 32 hurdles races. Two years before, he had set a record for the greatest number of Grade 1 wins, which wasn’t broken until 2019 by Winx.
Quevega
Quevega became a popular member of the Mullins contingent at the Cheltenham Festival. She produced six consecutive wins in the Mares’ Hurdle from 2009 through 2014. Her consistency and ability made her a star of the show. After her final win, Mullins won the subsequent two editions of the race with Glens Melody and Vroum Vroum Mag. Quevega retired in 2015.
Vautour
Vautour was a star of his generation, but the racing world was robbed of even further greatness from him when he was sadly put down in 2016 after an accident. He was only seven years old. Vautour won three times at the Cheltenham Festival, taking the 2014 Supreme Novices’, the 2015 JLT Novices’ and the 2016 Ryanair Chase, but he never got the coveted Gold Cup he looked destined for.
Douvan
Injuries hampered Douvan from pushing on to even greater successes during his career. He is regarded as one of the best that Closutton has had, and upon his move there, he produced 13 straight wins for Mullins, including the 2015 Supreme Novices’ and the 2016 Arkle. Douvan is the highest-rated Timeform horse that Mullins has ever trained. He retired in 2019.
Faugheen
Faugheen is another of Mullins’ greats who had injuries that got in the way of bigger things. His greatest success came in the 2016 Leopardstown Champion Hurdle when he smashed the field by 15 lengths, but he was struck down by injuries that limited his appearances. Faugheen’s official retirement was announced in May 2021.
Annie Power
Another famous mare from Closutton was Annie Power, who won 12 of 14 efforts over the hurdles. The biggest and best came at the 2016 Cheltenham Festival in the Championship Hurdle when she won by four and a half lengths. Annie Power ended her career on a high note shortly afterwards with a victory in the Grade 1 Aintree Hurdle.
Al Boum Photo
Al Boum Photo rose to the top of Mullins’ charts when he delivered the trainer’s first Gold Cup win in 2019, producing fantastic staying power to win by two and a half lengths. The following year, he defended his Gold Cup crown, becoming the first horse to do so since 2004. His retirement was announced in 2022.
From Chacun Pour Soi to Kemboy, Energumene, Footpad and Un de Sceaux, the list of star performers that have come from the teaching of Willie Mullins goes on and on. Among the best of his current crop is the great Galopin des Champs, who is quickly cementing his place among the best. Future stars of Closutton could be the likes of Maughreen, State Man and Fact To File.
What next for the Mullins Stables?
There is no doubt that Mullins is an inspirational trainer and stands as a towering figure in racing. His keen eye for spotting talent, his race strategy, and his ability to nurture horses through refined, specific training place him among the greatest of all time.
However, the Irish great is not finished yet. There are still challenges ahead and future opportunities to strengthen his legacy and impact on the sport even more, such as the Irish Grand National in April. Will Mullins be able to win a second Irish Grand National this year?
2023/24 stats
Mullins’ 2023/24 season record in Ireland saw him take a 33% win rate by the end of February, the highest since 2014/15, but a closer look at the recent form shows that things have been even better than that.
In January 2024, Mullins produced 40 winners, three of those in Britain. It was a positive sign of the Closutton form ahead of the Cheltenham Festival 2024. This followed a strong December in which he saw 36 winners get home.
The 37 winners in Ireland that scored in January for Mullins came from 88 runners – a phenomenal 42% strike rate. To put that into context, in the 2022/23 Irish National Hunt season, only four trainers provided more than 37 winners in the entire campaign.
At this year’s Dublin Racing Festival at Leopardstown, Mullins was also in spectacular form. He won all eight Grade 1 races at the meeting in yet another huge show of dominance. Even by his high standards, that was something special.
More Cheltenham success awaits?
The build-up to the Cheltenham Festival 2024 has been good, with State Man and El Fabiolo both having 100% win records for the season. Galopin Des Champs has been working well, and the exciting Fact To File has also been in fine fettle.
In the last ten years of the Cheltenham Festival, Willie Mullins has won almost double the number of races (65) than his nearest challenger (Gordon Elliott, 34). In seven of the last eight renewals of the Festival, he has recorded at least six winners.
Galopin Des Champs will be back at the Cheltenham Gold Cup 2024 seeking a hat-trick bid in the blue riband National Hunt race, while the popular State Man is the firm favourite for the Champion Hurdle after stiff competition from Constitution Hill was made redundant due to a recent injury. However, this is just a small part of another huge contingent of runners that he will send to Prestbury Park.
New records
There must be massive motivation and incentive for Willie Mullins on his 2024 Cheltenham return. He has become proficient at setting new records at the Festival, and now another one is in front of him.
The 67-year-old is just six winners shy of breaking the 100-winner barrier. If the form of his main crop of stars in Dublin last month is anything to go by, he may get there this year. Records, as Mullins himself has proven time and time again, are always there to be beaten.
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