Willie Mullins’s team has hardly been slumbering, but signs that jump racing’s most powerful operation is truly stirring could become clearer this weekend.
Il Etait Temps is a red-hot favourite to land Saturday’s Grade One highlight – the BETMGM Clarence House Chase at Ascot – and so advertise his claims to the Champion Chase crown at Cheltenham.
Mullins has 15 weekend runners in all, including six runners at both domestic fixtures in Navan and Thurles. He also has a pair heading for the Norfolk outpost of Fakenham on Sunday.
Both Clay Pigeons and Lultimatom will be ridden by Patrick Mullins as the sport’s most successful amateur rider continues his quest to ride winners at all 42 National Hunt tracks in Britain.
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At the same time, signals the Closutton machine might be starting to go through the new-year gears at just the right time for the approaching spring festivals look in place in the Thurles action.
Just one of the five runners in the Grade Two Horse & Jockey Hotel Chase – still widely referred to as the Kinloch Brae – isn’t a Mullins horse.
The other Grade Two at Thurles, the €50,000 Carey Glass Novice Chase, looks to be dominated by one of his top mares, Jade De Grugy.
All of it occurs on the back of Wednesday’s five-timer at Fairyhouse, where Mullins runners dominated in a fashion all too ominously familiar for his rivals. It added to an almost 25 per cent strike-rate for the perennial champion trainer since Christmas.
That’s a much more usual sort of ratio for the man who has redefined success levels in the sport. With just a fortnight until the Dublin Racing Festival, it is a particularly baleful sign for Gordon Elliott.
His outstanding Christmas form prompted talk that this could finally be the season he dethrones his great rival as Ireland’s champion trainer.
Elliott is 11/4 with one firm to pull it off and he currently holds a lead of almost €700,000 in the championship table.
Elliott has maintained a consistent “no chance” line when it comes to the championship. That is perhaps understandable because as well as his own horses’ superb form, there was a sense of hit-and-miss about some of the Mullins runners.
Admittedly, it hasn’t stopped him accumulating nearly €2.5 million in prizemoney in Ireland alone this season, while his Grade One victories include two at the top level in Britain.
Il Etait Temps contributed the first of them with a resounding success in Sandown’s Tingle Creek last month. It put the diminutive grey top of the Champion Chase betting until the remarkable performance of reigning champion Marine Nationale at Leopardstown over Christmas.
Now, Il Etait Temps is taking on the cross-channel stalwart Jonbon for a third time in Ascot’s Clarence House. The odds strongly suggest it will be a 3-0 outcome for the Irish star.
A first indication that Il Etait Temps might have progressed significantly from his novice days came at the end of last term in Sandown’s Celebration Chase.
The Tingle Creek looked to confirm it and it all means Jonbon faces a major task if he’s to repeat his 2025 success in the big race, which is due off at 3.30. Harry Cobden, under his new tie to champion owner JP McManus, rides Jonbon for the first time.
Gidleigh Park and the emerging force Thistle Ask face a real test of their potential in the four-runner contest. Mullins twice had to settle for second in the Clarence House with Energumene, although he did saddle the winner three times with Un De Sceaux between 2016 and 2018.
“He (Il Etait Temps) looks like he’s just coming into his prime. He looks to be improving every season; he’s an incredible little horse that way,” Patrick Mullins reported. “We’ve come out the wrong side of a few of these Clarence Houses, so it would be nice to come out the right side this time.”
After Il Etait Temps, jockey Paul Townend will switch his attention to Thurles. He has opted to stick with last year’s winner Appreciate It in Sunday’s big chase that Willie Mullins has won five times in the last six years.
Jack Foley’s Monbeg Park is the only non-Mullins horse in the five-runner race. A decade ago, this race went to Don Cossack, who used it as a springboard for Gold Cup glory at Cheltenham.
Appreciate It had to chase home Affordale Fury on his return to action at the course in November, a performance that looks a lot different now on the back of the latter’s subsequent Savills Chase victory.
Jade De Grugy lost little in defeat at Limerick over Christmas behind The Big Westerner in testing conditions. The comparatively decent Thurles surface will be no problem to her and she remains in the mix for the both the Mares Hurdle and Chase at Cheltenham.
