Willie Mullins

My first visit to the Cheltenham Festival was in 1978 which, funnily enough, was the year of the snow. We woke up on Gold Cup day and the whole place was white and the races were called off. We are now hoping there won’t be a repeat 40 years on but the Cheltenham weather people say it is not going to be like that.

I went with my parents that year and obviously I was disappointed not to see the Gold Cup but I had already decided by that stage which path I wanted to take. When I was at home just watching racing and watching horses like Arkle and learning about the Festival, like any Irish person involved in racing you would easily catch the bug for Cheltenham.

Luckily enough I was able to get my first winner there as a trainer with Tourist Attraction in 1995. I remember leaving the track and thinking ‘That is it, we’ve done it, we’ve had our Cheltenham winner’ because at that time certainly you’d be wondering if you’d ever have a horse to be able to win there. When I was growing up and watching Cheltenham in the early 60’s, Irish winners were few and far between but how the thing has turned around has been amazing. A different economic climate has certainly helped to change that.

It’s tough this year. Gordon probably has better bankers and then it is hard to know in the handicaps what way things will go. We have our chances. I think we were beaten by his yard on countback last year for the Leading Trainer Award and hopefully it will be a similar story again this year in that both Gordon and I will have as many winners between us again.

It would be great if we could be champion trainer for the week of Cheltenham, at this stage though we are just hoping to get a winner on the board on the first day and take it from there. I would never dream of going to Cheltenham thinking about being champion trainer, I just hope we don’t have a washout and that all the horses come home safely.

I’m delighted with the team that we have got going this year and we’ve got some great chances but they are not as traditionally short in the betting as they used to be. But when you look at the likes of Annie Power and Vautour who are not there now, Douvan at his best and Faugheen at his best, we have had extraordinary horses and to get all those at the one time was extraordinary - we might never get those days again but we keep trying. We just hope some of ours will fire next week.

Un De Sceaux has done tremendously well all season and I think he’s the ultimate iron horse. He’s in great condition and we’ve plenty to work on still for Cheltenham and everything is going well with him. Things can change but we are aiming him for the Ryanair.

Douvan has been pleasing me and doing everything right. He has a good few bits of work to do over the next week and I imagine he has to go for the Champion Chase, all being well, and so far all is well. Min, likewise, I couldn't see him going anywhere else than the Champion Chase.

It was great to get Faugheen out to win the Morgiana Hurdle the first day and then I thought he worked well enough to run at the Dublin Racing Festival and he ran a grand race, way better than Christmas, but he’ll have to up his game to try and win at Cheltenham. He might not need to be as good as he once was, but I still think he is competitive.

I always take the view that if you have a good horse and he wins a real good race that you’ve been lucky and should enjoy it. If they can come back and do it again, that’s a bonus, but if they cant’ do it again, you were there one day and we all saw how good he was. A lot of people think when you have a good horse you must produce it every year but how many do? How many have the will power, how many will have the stamina and how many are sound enough to come back year after year? I’ve been lucky enough to have a few of them but they don’t all do it and this fella might be one that doesn’t come back and reach the heights that he did. I’m delighted Faugheen was what he was and hopefully he can come back to that but age is not on his side and what will be will be. However, while I was hoping he would come out and sparkle the last day, that run wasn’t maybe as bad as I first thought.

We’re very lucky. Who would have ever dreamt that we’d be in the position we are in and for us it is fantasy land. As Irish trainers we had that mindset of just being glad to train one Cheltenham Festival winner because we hadn’t got the firepower and it is funny how the firepower is now on this side of the Irish Sea.

When you see the new owners coming into racing, Lloyd Williams, the top flat owner in Australia, buying an Irish point-to-point winner and Cheveley Park, top flat owners as well, it’s amazing how popular jump racing is getting and I’m sure meetings like Cheltenham drive that.

Cheltenham has it’s own perch there in the middle of March with nothing else on midweek and you can have all the news channels, television, everything focussing just on Cheltenham and it is obviously rubbing off when you see the amount of people that want to get into jump racing. That has to be hugely beneficial for jump racing.

I hear a lot of people giving out that Cheltenham is sucking the life out of everything else but I think it is bringing the sport on way more than any other track can bring it on, it is raising the bar all the time.

I’m not sure about Gordon, but I do know a lot of my owners are English based and they are gravitating over here, it is funny how the whole dynamic is changing.

Giving my son Patrick his first winner at Cheltenham was a fantastic day, we’ve had some really memorable days there and it would be hard for me to say what the best day at Cheltenham was. My first winner to ride there, my first winner to train there, the first time we had more than one winner there, Patrick riding a winner there, then Patrick riding the winner of the National Hunt Chase, they’re all different but all great days and I’d hate to have to pick one.

Of course, the Gold Cup is a race I’d love to win. It might not have been the luckiest race for us but a good few of the horses we’ve finished second with had no excuses and probably did well to finish second. We’ve a nice hand this year, it looks an open race. Djakadam, Killultagh Vic, Total Recall and Bachasson may all line up in the race this time. When you have a horse of that calibre you should probably have a crack at it.