Irish horse racing trainer Willie Mullins has expressed his delight at a record-breaking week at Ireland’s Punchestown Festival.
Mullins was crowned Irish champion jumps trainer for a 12th time, he came from E459,100 to surpass his rival Gordon Elliott to claim Ireland’s top honour for jumps’ trainer.
Mullins Joined OTB’s Joe Molloy on Monday’s show.
“Oh, beyond all reasonable expectations. If someone came to you and said, ‘Willie, at the start of the week would you take nine winners and whatever prize money?’ – most guys would say of course, yes. Everyone would say it, me included. And it was way out of the ordinary, it I don't know why it came about or how. It was unprecedented, you know.”
The 61-year-old says he didn’t know how it came about, but he did admit that everything seemed to fall into place throughout the week.
“I don’t know where it came from but everything seemed to fall into place.”
Elliott finished with 5.16m euro, finishing 809,524 euro behind Mullins.
The trainer says the horses seemed to come right in the peak of their form during the week. He says many of the stable even surpassed his expectations. Even Faugheen.
"The horses seemed to come right in form during the week. That's the only think I can think about. Even horses that we thought would work poorly, came out and won. Faugheen, we know Faugheen has huge ability but the Saturday previous, myself and Ruby run the gallops, and while watching him work myself and Ruby turned away from one another and said, 'This isn't good enough."
You can listen to the full interview above and/or subscribe on youtube channel here
Download the brand new OffTheBall App in the Play Store & App Store right now! We've got you covered!
Subscribe to OffTheBall's YouTube channel for more videos, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for the latest sporting news and content.
