UK Horse Racing Tips

Perennial Irish Champion National Hunt Trainer – perennial, that is, since 2007/08, having first won the trainers’ title in 2000/01 – Willie Mullins is also the most successful trainer in the history of the Cheltenham Festival, where he has won the leading trainer award seven times in the last decade. Seven winners at the 2020 Festival, including his second Cheltenham Gold Cup in as many years, courtesy of Al Boum Photo, extended his winning tally to 72.

Yet, for all his subsequent success, Mullins still owes a debt of gratitude to his first ever Cheltenham Festival winner, Tourist Attraction, who died, at the age of 31, in April, 2020. On March 14, 1995, at a time when Mullins was, by his own admission, ‘only dreaming of having a Cheltenham winner’, the 6-year-old mare lined up for the Citroen Supreme Novices’ Hurdle as a largely unconsidered 25/1 chance.

Mullins had had difficulty finding a suitable jockey and thus turned to 18-year-old Mark Dwyer, who knew one of the members of the North Kildare Racing Club, the syndicate that owned Tourist Attraction. However, Dwyer produced what Mullins later described as ‘a peach of a ride’, chasing the front-running favourite, Callisoe Bay, down the hill, challenging at the final flight and staying on well to win by two lengths. Mullins later recalled that he thought the eventual second, Ventana Canyon, who was sent off second-favourite, was beatable because Tourist Attraction had already beaten him, albeit on 3lb better terms, in a National Hunt Flat Race at Punchestown the previous April. Nevertheless, he also said, ‘The North Kildare Racing Club are a great bunch of people and I remember it was a great day at Cheltenham; we were all hugely delighted.’

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