The Irish trainer is expected to dominate at the Cheltenham Festival once again with the milestone of 100 winners in his sights
“Don’t worry,” Willie Mullins says quietly at his kitchen table, “we think about this too because the game needs to be healthy. The game needs people coming into it.” The great Irish trainer is only days away from next week’s Cheltenham Festival and his expected domination will raise yet more questions about its impact on the sport he loves.
We’re midway through two fascinating hours together in County Carlow and I concede that the remarkable excellence of his yard does not mean the consequences for racing are really Mullins’s problem. It would be like sitting in Pep Guardiola’s kitchen and asking if he was worried about the health of English football when Manchester City might win a fourth successive Premier League title. Mullins is far more dominant than City but he smiles as it’s unlikely that Guardiola’s sleek apartment in Manchester contains a noisy cockerel called Jeff.