Willie Mullins broke the Festival record set by Nicky Henderson two years ago when taking his total of winners at the meeting to eight. Mullins, who tasted success on each of the four days, added two of the handicap hurdles to his previous haul of six grade ones.
The measure of his position in the sport is that nobody was surprised by his prodigious haul, nor does anybody expect it to be a fleeting phase. His principal owners are all re-stocking for next season with considerable resources and, remarkably, Mullins has the ante-post favourites for all four feature races at the 2016 Festival.
He was fast losing his voice yesterday but he smilingly denied it was either through shouting his winners home or the volume of interviews he was required to do. “I think I must have been drinking out of damp glasses,” he said.
The Mullins name also featured large in a race he did not win. Martello Tower, winner of the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle, is trained by his sister-in-law Mags Mullins. Her son, Danny, rode the winner at exercise yesterday morning before partnering the runner-up, Milsean, for his uncle.
Nicky Henderson has had a lean season in the leading races but he arrived at this Festival with one strong conviction. “I felt we had to win the Triumph Hurdle,” he said. “If we didn’t, it was going to be a struggle.” Henderson’s belief was more than borne out, as his runners filled the first three places.
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Peace And Co and Top Notch, first and second, are both owned by Simon Munir and Isaac Souede. “It’s quite nice to do something totally ridiculous,” Henderson said.
The return of Sheikh Fahad al-Thani to jump racing did not bring instant success. The Qatari sheikh, so influential on the Flat, acquired his love of racing from watching Cheltenham and bought the Foxhunters’ Chase runner, Current Event, on Monday. He finished twelfth behind On The Fringe.
Most of the 69,000 crowd stayed after the last to cheer A P McCoy but one man oblivious to being upstaged was Michael Scudamore. The young Herefordshire trainer was enjoying his first Festival winner in the race renamed after McCoy. The victory of Next Sensation, ridden by the trainer’s big brother, Tom, meant Britain pipped Ireland 14-13 in the BetBright Cup.