Horse Racings Turf Legends looks at the Irish Trainer Willie Mullins

Our horse racing turf legend this month is the former jockey Willie Mullins. He was born in the mid-fifties and after working as an assistant trainer to both Jim Bolger and his father Paddy Mullins he took up his own training licence in 1988.

His father trained horses for more than 50 years and enjoyed his last winner at the grand age of 84 with Vintage Tipple winning the Irish Oaks in 2003. We can assume that a few “vintage tipples” were drunk in celebration that day.

Racing is in the family blood with both of Willie’s brother, Tom and Tony also training but with Willie having been six times amateur champion jockey over in Ireland and inheriting, if only part, of the vast knowledge held by his father we can see how his training career has been such a success.

Since taking out his licence some of his notable achievements include:

Hedghunter – 2005 Grand National winner
Hurricane Fly – 2011 and 2013 Champion Hurdle winner
Vautour – 2016 Ryanair Chase winner.
Quevega – Six times winner of the David Nicholson Mares Hurdle

In 2015 he became the first trainer to have the top three horses in the Champion Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival and during the Festival he ended the meeting with 8 winners, a record which is still standing.

In general it is accepted that Willie Mullins is considered to be the best National Hunt trainer in Ireland, and over in the UK, particularly at the Cheltenham Festival, he has a clear edge over the respected Paul Nicholls and Nicky Henderson.

The bare statistics mirror this as can be seen below.

The statistics cover the period 2012-2017 (Mid-Nov).

The above figures prove Mullins success over his rivals conclusively.

He has trained the greatest number of winners, has the best strike-rate and in addition he has also won considerably more in prize money than his three main rivals.

Operating successfully in both the UK and Ireland Mullins is equally adept at training horses for a Flat campaign.

Since January 2014 he has saddled 47 Flat winners from 236 runners for a 20% strike-rate and a level stake profit of +19.21pts at SP and an even better +66.98pts using the Betfair SP, the profit coming from his handicap runners which included 26 winners combined with a healthy 1.11 A/E*.

For those of you that may not be familiar with A/E here is a quick explanation of what it is and why it can be useful when looking for profitable pointers:-

Actual versus Expected
A figure based on actual versus expected return. This is calculated as the total number of wins versus the expected number of wins.

The expected number is based on the official starting price, for example a horse at 1/10 has an expectancy of 0.91, an Evens money shot has an expectancy of 0.50, 2/1 is an expectancy of 0.33 and 10/1 is an expectancy of 0.09.
When our analysis shows an A/E figure of greater than 1.00 it is an indication that the returns are better than would be expected by the betting market.

In September of last year, 2016, Mullins suffered what may have been considered a considerable blow to the yard when Mr Ryanair, Michael O’Leary’s Gigginstown Stud, removed all 60 of its horses from his County Carlow yard following a dispute over training fees.

At this point Mullins was left with a fight for the Irish title during that season with Gordon Elliott, the runner-up in the 2015-2016 season, who took delivery of a significant number of the horses removed from the Mullins yard.

The history books however will show that against all the odds Mullins dramatically pipped Gordon Elliott to retain his Trainers’ Championship on the final day of the season, and this has to go down as one of the greatest achievements by the Closutton-based trainer given the circumstances under which it was achieved.

With the main part of the 2017/18 jumps campaign starting to hot up the Mullins yard (as at 14th Nov) had recorded 93 winners from 284 runners and amassed over 1.4m Euros in win and place prize money. Gordon Elliott has the same number of winners but from close to double the number of runners and is slightly ahead in prize money by stakes.

Going forward, the absence of the Michael O'Leary effect may prove to be a potentially huge positive, and there are two owners at least who will probably be overjoyed about the news. Susannah and Rich Ricci had 41 horses running from the Mullins yard last season which equates to 23% of the stable, whilst Andrea and Graham Wylie had 14, so between them they totalled 55 horses, 30% of the stables runners. Despite their apparent affability they would most likely have been absolutely fed up with working around the O'Leary interference and disruption and the consequent dilution of big race winners.

Looking back at the 2017 Cheltenham Festival there were many in the run up to the meeting that considered Mullins’s previous level of achievements to be unreachable and during the first two days of the Festival the yard sent out 25 runners without a winner, however the Closutton maestro sent out a four-timer on the Thursday before two further winners on the Friday, so 6winners from 20 runners on days 3 & 4.

A lasting memory from the meeting was the dignity and professional calm which was exuded by Mullins, despite enduring a miserable start. Clearly his knowledge, wisdom and experience helped him to cope with the situation.

So is there a way we can profit from following this great trainer?

Well as we have already seen his handicap runners on the Flat have been a good source of profits so are there any additional areas that we need to keep a close eye on?

Just before we start delving in to the figures let us take a look at the top line figures from the last 5 year period (2013 to mid-Nov 2017).

Remarkably we would have made a profit at the Betfair SP during the last three years just by backing every runner blindly to level stakes!

If we look more closely at the above figures we find that certain types of races have performed well in terms of potential areas of profit particularly if we keep with the theme of the Betfair SP. It is well documented that many of us are troubled by the increasing prevalence of bookmaker restrictions so it does seem a sensible move to base our findings on a readily available manner of placing our bets, the exchanges.

A Return on Investment of +32% is not to be sniffed at which is the tally that backing the Mullins Novice Hurdlers would have achieved over the last five year period.

On closer inspection 2012/2013 and 2013/2014 ended with small losses (-3.57pts & -3.66pts respectively), but all three of the most recent periods have been profitable.

If we consider the racecourses where the yard is seen to have regular runners, Cheltenham did not fare as well as possibly we have expected with 8winners from 54 runners (14.81%) and a loss of 11.44pts at BFSP.

In contrast both Galway and Leopardstown have been very fruitful as have a number of the smaller Irish venues.

The following Table highlights the most productive racecourses at which to follow the Willie Mullins Novice Hurdlers based on the research data:-

The results have been pretty consistent over the 5 year period under review with each of them recording a level stakes profit to Betfair SP, so we can be hopeful that this trend will continue going forward.

Suggested Method

Follow Willie Mullins runners in Novice Hurdles entered at the following courses:

Clonmel
Cork
Down Royal
Galway
Kilbeggan
Leopardstown
Limerick
Naas
Punchestown

During the last 3 years there have been approximately 50 such qualifiers and roughly 1 in 3 have gone on to win their respective races.

If you prefer to have a greater number of bets you could do worse than add in the yards runners in Handicaps on the Flat.