'He has an innate instinct to see things differently' - exploring Willie Mullins, the unorthodox visionary who revolutionised jump racing

In this feature first published in February 2020 exclusively for Racing Post Members' Club subscribers, Ireland editor Richard Forristal explores the genius that is Willie Mullins by speaking to some of the people closest to him. This has now been made free to read for users of the Racing Post app as our Sunday Read.

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Distilling the genius of Willie Mullins down to a couple of identifiable traits is a crude tactic that oversimplifies a man of many layers and enigmatic nuance, but there are a couple of attributes in particular that seem to be constant throughout his illustrious professional life.

From before he ever acquired his licence to train in 1987, the eldest son of Paddy Mullins, the great 20th-century patriarch of Irish racing, exhibited two characteristics that would ultimately set him apart: vision and ambition.

The combined force of those instinctive impulses is the essence of the most successful jumps trainer of the 21st century. Mullins sees opportunities and pursues them with meticulous diligence.

Roll the clock back to 1983, when he had emerged from under Ted Walsh's shadow as an amateur rider of considerable stature. With the blessing of Paddy – 'The Boss' – he had assumed responsibility for plotting Atha Cliath's campaign.

Crucially, Irish horses had recently become eligible to run in the Foxhunters' at Aintree. Mullins spotted that the door was ajar. He guided Atha Cliath around the inside of a course that was as formidable then as it is forgiving now to record a historic victory. That pioneering enterprise is one of his enduring hallmarks to this day.

Walsh recalls his unorthodox mindset. "Willie always tried things other fellas wouldn't," Walsh says. "I remember riding one day at Clonmel, and I heard this horse galloping on the ambulance road – I thought it must have been loose. I looked over my shoulder and it was Willie.

"The ground was bottomless and the road wasn't dolled off like it is now. The rest of us were slogging through the mud but Willie had decided he'd go out on the road – and duly bolted in. He always had a great brain and wasn't afraid to take chances."

Ted Walsh: 'Willie always tried things other fellas wouldn't'Credit: Edward Whitaker

Mullins' visionary quality brings to mind a contemporary slogan. If you can't see it, you can't be it.

Consider even his targeting of the Mares' Hurdle at Cheltenham. It's not a prize every trainer covets, but where others might turn up their nose Mullins scents possibility.

There have been only 12 runnings and Mullins has farmed nine, encompassing Quevega's Cheltenham Festival record of six triumphs. He has always looked to conquer new frontiers, and that capacity to identify, plot and execute something different epitomises his legacy.

Ruby Walsh, his formidable ally, illustrates the point by recalling how they came to land the most lucrative victory of their respective careers.

"He was always ambitious about where he could go," he says. "I remember he said to me once that we must find a horse for that race in Japan [Nakayama Grand Jump]. After Blackstairmountain won at Leopardstown in December 2011, he said to me, 'That's the horse for Japan'. It would be another year and a half before it happened, but it happened.

"After he brought Holy Orders down for the Melbourne Cup in 2003, I remember thinking, 'Well, that was a disaster'. And Willie said, 'Maybe, but we learned a lot'. Then he went back with Simenon, who got placed in 2013, and Max Dynamite, who was unlucky not to win for Frankie Dettori in 2015.

"I was standing at Flemington that day thinking, 'How did we get from 54 horses being trained on the outskirts of Carlow 20 years earlier to here?' What he has built is incredible."

Ruby Walsh: 'Willie was always ambitious about where he could go'Credit: Edward Whitaker

The trainer's methods are not always readily intelligible, and a tendency to internalise his thoughts makes it hard for even those closest to him to read him. At Closutton, where the ethos is more functional practicality than frilly cosmetics, Mullins works intuitively off his eye rather than to a preordained regime.

While a stubborn streak courses through him, his penchant for finalising running plans at the last minute is at odds with such obstinacy.

That fluidity, which often leads to the sort of 11th-hour changes that led to Vautour being diverted from the Gold Cup to the Ryanair Chase in 2016, can infuriate observers, but history is written by the winners. Mullins sets the terms of engagement.

"He likes to do it his way, but he changes the way he does things every year so isn't a prisoner to doing things exactly the same," Patrick Mullins says of the training routine.

"As for the way he works mentally, everything is left to the last minute so that when he is making a decision as many variables as possible are in place. That gives him the freedom to change his mind, which can be frustrating for the media and owners and for someone working in the yard, but it's just the way he does things. And he gets it right more often than he doesn't.

"It's something I struggle with at times and I do think of strangling him from time to time, but that's probably normal enough! David Casey works very well with him, and his relationship with Ruby is pretty unique, maybe reminiscent of Vincent O'Brien and Lester Piggott back in the day."

Patrick Mullins: 'He gets it right more often than he doesn't'Credit: Patrick McCann (racingpost.com/photos)

Mullins' training career started with the land in Leighlinbridge that his father had bought in the early 1970s. Apart from a year with Jim Bolger from the autumn of 1982, he was home-schooled for his equine syllabus at their humble Doninga citadel in Goresbridge, County Kilkenny.

After marrying Jackie Longton – a successful amateur – the couple moved into the refurbished Closutton farmhouse and started training with half a dozen horses. Jackie still plays various pivotal roles to this day, not least managing yard operations along with Dick Dowling and Virginie Bascop.

It was a slow grind. Mullins' father was the dominant figure at the time, a ten-time champion who won his final title in 1991 with 64 winners. That season, his eldest son broke into the top ten in terms of wins courtesy of a 16-winner haul. The previous season, with just five fewer winners, he had languished in 28th spot. In those days, the configuration of the table was much more compact, although Aidan O'Brien would set about changing that.

To the outside world, Mullins was just another capable trainer chipping away. To those closest to him, though, he was able to do extraordinary things with ordinary resources.

His brother George is the nearest of his three brothers to him in age and also geographically, as they live alongside each other at Closutton.

"He had a decent number of horses back then but they wouldn't have been straightforward horses," says the lesser-spotted Mullins. "What he did mostly was take horses and make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."

"You have to remember where he came from, where he learned his trade and saw it all," Ruby Walsh notes. "That comes from the boss in Doninga; he ran a business, started from the very bottom and made it work with mares and homebreds. They all had to be won with, and you'd often hear Willie referring to the boss. He is the very same in the sense that he has to maximise every horse he has.

"At times, myself and Patrick and David Casey would be throwing our eyes up to heaven because he would put more thought into a 100-rated handicap hurdler, or in plotting a bumper in Tramore next August for a six-year-old maiden filly, than he would into Al Boum Photo or Faugheen."

Willie Mullins: a first Cheltenham Festival success with Tourist Attraction in 1995 was a sign of things to comeCredit: John Grossick (racingpost.com/photos)

At the 1995 Cheltenham Festival, Mullins secured a breakthrough Grade 1 when the mare Tourist Attraction defied market expectations under Mark Dwyer in the Supreme Novices' Hurdle. By then, he had already decided he would be a trainer rather than a trader. The first real acid test of that commitment came when offers flooded in for Whither Or Which after he had bolted up at the 1995 Leopardstown Christmas festival.

Mullins' resolve held and he convinced Robert Sinclair and Noel O'Callaghan to come in with him for smaller money on the proviso he would keep the ride in the Champion Bumper. By then he was 40 years of age, and Richard Dunwoody was banging on the door, but he wanted to be in control of his own destiny. They duly delivered come March, initiating a fabled association with the race.

Twelve months later, after Mullins had retired with six amateur titles, Florida Pearl announced his enormous talent with victory in the same race under Dunwoody. Alexander Banquet would go on to complete the Champion Bumper hat-trick under Walsh, then still an amateur, in 1998.

Mullins was now being recognised as someone who knew how to handle a good horse, and in Florida Pearl and Alexander Banquet he had the ammunition to showcase that capability to the full. Between them they would plunder five Hennessy Gold Cups at Leopardstown, Florida Pearl rolling back the years to secure his fourth under Richard Johnson as a sprightly 12-year-old in 2004.

In 2001, Mullins succeeded in wresting the King George VI Chase back to Ireland for the first time since 1975 when Florida Pearl soared to victory for Adrian Maguire.

He was crowned champion for a first time that same year, but Meade promptly prised the crown back off him in 2002 and held on to it until 2007. All the while, Mullins continued to excel with bumper horses and high-class novices at Cheltenham each March. Still, he knew he needed to do something different to get to the next level.

In 2005, he masterminded a feted Grand National coup with Hedgehunter. Rather than constitute a glorious culmination of his life's work, though, it coincided with a change in direction, because 2005 was also the year that Mullins went backwards to go forwards.

Doninga, inevitably, held the key to the future. When Paddy Mullins sacked the French Champion Hurdle with Dawn Run in 1984, a young assistant at their Maisons-Laffitte base called Pierre Boulard doubled as his translator before spending a year in Doninga broadening his vocabulary.

When Willie was looking for an edge, it was to him that he turned at the beginning of 2005. Together, Boulard and Mullins' chief scout Harold Kirk would strike gold.

Later in 2005, Pat O'Riordan, a client of Paddy's, introduced him to the wealthy and colourful American banker Rich Ricci. Scotsirish was the first horse to sport a version of the Ricci colours in 2006, while a couple of years later Pomme Tiepy and Themoonandsixpence sported the now ubiquitous silks of Ricci's wife Susannah. Then it took off.

Mullins mined the French connection for gems like Vautour, Quevega and Douvan, and a rising tide lifted all boats. Equine galacticos Hurricane Fly, Apple's Jade, Un De Sceaux and Al Boum Photo were all sourced for their respective owners in France, while the more traditional domestic route continued to throw up diamonds like Annie Power and Faugheen.

Hedgehunter: Grand National winner for Mullins in 2005Credit: Edward Whitaker

He belatedly won his second trainers' title in 2008, which was also the year in which the insatiable Hurricane Fly landed. Closutton was about to become a leviathan.

Around that time the crumbling economy began to exact a crippling toll on many of Mullins' rivals. Yet Ricci, estimated to be worth around £100 million, seemed recession-proof, likewise Michael O’Leary and Graham Wylie, who joined the roster from 2010 onwards.

The sport's biggest patrons traditionally tend not to appreciate being one of many, but Mullins had the diplomatic nous to sate the array of competitive egos that he had accumulated under one roof.

"He is very fair and he treats everybody the same, and he told me that from the very beginning," Ricci says. "I was giving him multiple horses and asked what was the discount, and he said there wasn't one – that you are treated the same whether you have one or 50. I like that."

Reflecting on Mullins' approach to running plans, Ricci adds: "That took me a while to get used to – he is a man who likes options. I understand that now, and you have to remember that while this is a hobby for us it is a business for him.

"At first I was very frustrated by that – very frustrated! – but you get used to it. The way I describe it now is that I have learned to function in that world. I always call it a tax. If you want to be involved with someone of his stature, you have to be prepared to pay that tax."

O’Leary was not as fond of that democratic way. When Mullins increased his fees from €50 a day to €55 in late 2016, O'Leary's Gigginstown firm was the largest in his yard with 60 horses. The cumulative cost of the price hike was prohibitive in O'Leary's eyes, and negotiations failed to bend Mullins' one-size-fits-all philosophy. Neither man blinked.

"That was the year we had nearly won the championship in Britain," Patrick Mullins recalls. "We knew that not appeasing Michael would probably cost us any chance of doing that again, and Gordon Elliott was getting stronger as well.

"It was huge. They are two men who believe what they believe, and Michael had a very valid point, but it was decided to make the decision come what may. There was no falling out, and Willie has always impressed upon me that there is nothing to be gained from falling out with anyone."

The response to Gigginstown's departure has illustrated the extent of Mullins' resilience and his relentless drive. After a cliff-hanger finale to the 2016 championship, he prevailed by €200,000 from Elliott, whose numerical total of 193 wins equalled the record that Mullins had set in 2013.

Mullins reclaimed that record in 2018 with 212 winners, when both trainers amassed more than €5 million in prize-money. Elliott might one day be champion, but he would tell you himself that it is Mullins who has re-imagined what that means.

"His willingness to expand always amazed me," Ruby Walsh reflects. "It's only ever going in one direction with Willie, and even to this day he will start his entries with the bumper horses. That's not because he loves bumpers, it's because he is always looking to the future."

Mullins' capacity to source and produce precocious youngsters is renowned, but he has evolved into the most complete trainer of our time.

Apart from his 13 trainers' titles and six leading trainer awards at Cheltenham, he has won four Champion Hurdles with Hurricane Fly, Annie Power and Faugheen, who led home a clean sweep of the places in 2015.

Al Boum Photo vanquished the ghosts of six runners-up in the Gold Cup by securing the Holy Grail under Paul Townend last year, Mullins' 65th festival winner keeping him ahead of Nicky Henderson, who had a ten-year head start. Paul Nicholls, next on the list in third, is all of 20 behind.

Al Boum Photo: a first Cheltenham Gold Cup winner for Mullins last yearCredit: Edward Whitaker

For a snapshot of the range of Mullins' sorcery, just look at this year's Dublin Racing Festival, where he ran a mind-boggling 50 horses. He won with a bumper horse who looks a bit of a monster (Appreciate It) and snared Grade 1s with an imposing novice hurdler (Asterion Forlonge), a veteran superstar (Faugheen) and a serious contender for championship honours (Chacun Pour Soi).

Throw in his considerable exploits on the Flat, and you get a sense of the exquisite horsemanship of someone who has revolutionised the jumps racing landscape. There is an old-fashioned decency about him but he is the one who has set the parameters for the modern game.

"Willie has done to jump racing in Ireland what Martin Pipe did to it in England, but along with the volume of winners he has added depth of quality," Ted Walsh suggests.

"Of course, the game is very different now. There used to be only 18 races at Cheltenham, for example, so the growth of it all has allowed him to do what he has done, but he is the full package.

"Talking to him, he reminds me of Vincent O'Brien, and I couldn't pay him a bigger compliment than that. He is able to tell you things you wouldn't have thought of. I don't know what makes Willie special or what made Vincent special, but they have and had an innate instinct to see things differently.

"On top of it all, he comes across as a very ordinary, humble fella, much like Seamus Heaney, who was a wonderful poet who made poetry out of such mundane things. Well, what Seamus Heaney could do with words, Willie does with horses."

Quite. Heaney might say Mullins could handle a spade. Just like his old man.

More Sunday Reads:

Drugs, debacles and a hell of a lot of winners: the highs and lows of Frankie Dettori 

Harry Cobden: 'I came home that night and half thought, right, I've had enough of this - but that's a coward's thing to do' 

Ruby Walsh: 'Annie Power hurt - that could have been my Frankie Dettori day' 

'Legacy is nothing, it's bollocks, nobody will remember me in decades to come' - inside the mind of Sir Mark Prescott 

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