Given his dominance at Cheltenham it took Willie Mullins until 2019 to win his first Cheltenham Gold Cup. Since then he’s waste no time at all in racing to four wins in the jumping season’s blue riband event, winning the 2024 edition with Galopin Des Champs, who was repeating last year’s win.
That win takes Mullins to within one of Tom Dreaper’s record of five wins in the race, a record he may well equal next year should Galopin Des Champs arrive at Cheltenham for the 2025 renewal in anything like the same form as he did here.
In the race the Mullins’s star was never worse than third. Coming off the turn for home jockey Paul Townend set his sights for the line and Galopin Des Champs responded, taking up the running at the second last and powering up the famous Cheltenham hill in similar fashion to his 2023 win.
Townend, who has partnered all four of Mullins’ winners in the race and now stands alongside Pat Taaffe and the joint winning-most Gold Cup rider, was keen to praise the horse after the race. “He pulled out every stop. We went for reserves in the last furlong that only the really good ones have. He was brave the whole way around for me.”
The trainer had the sort of week most trainers would dream about but one which has now become almost an expectation among punters such is Mullins’ remarkable record. He became the first trainer ever to win 100 races at the Cheltenham Festival when Jasmin De Vaux, ridden by his son Patrick triumphed in the Champion Bumper earlier in the week.
In light of that ground-breaking achievement it is perhaps fitting that the 100th running of the Cheltenham Gold Cup went to the man whose name is now synonymous with both Irish racing and the Cheltenham Festival.
Mullins also enjoyed success earlier in the day when Absurde, as horse the trainer had sent to finish seventh in the Melbourne Cup last November, took the competitive County Handicap Hurdle.
