With their association to be renewed, John Ingles looks at Gigginstown's success with Willie Mullins prior to their split six years ago.
Six years ago this month one of the most successful partnerships in Irish jumps racing was abruptly ended when owners Gigginstown House Stud and Willie Mullins parted company after the trainer increased his training fees from the autumn of 2016. ‘I put my fees up for the first time in ten years and Gigginstown chose not pay them’ Mullins said at the time, adding that ‘they’ve been very good to us over the years, they’ve bought some fantastic horses and there’s a fantastic team of horses going to whoever is going to get them.’
For their part, Gigginstown issued a statement expressing ‘considerable regret’ at the ending of their partnership, thanking Mullins and the Closutton team for the success they had enjoyed together and ending with the ‘hope that an agreement can be reached at some time in the future which will allow Willie to resume buying and training more graded winners for us.’
It would now appear that that time has come with the announcement that bumper winner Shanbally Kid, bought earlier in the year, will be racing in the Gigginstown colours for Mullins this season. Investment in new young horses again is itself another change of direction after Gigginstown owner Michael O’Leary announced in May 2019, little more than a month after his Tiger Roll had won the Grand National for the second time, that he’d be winding down the operation over the course of the next four or five years.
The loss of sixty Gigginstown horses – twenty of them going to chief rival Gordon Elliott – looked a potentially fatal blow to Mullins’ prospects of retaining his title of champion trainer in Ireland in 2016/17. Paddy Power made Elliott favourite to become champion instead that season and with a lead of around €400,000 going into the Punchestown Festival it indeed looked as though Elliott would finally take the title after finishing runner-up to Mullins for five straight seasons. But nine winners for the reigning champion that week secured Mullins his tenth consecutive championship.
Among the horses that Mullins must have been saddest to see leave Closutton was the previous season’s top juvenile hurdler Apple’s Jade. Runner-up to Ivanovich Gorbatov in the Triumph Hurdle at Cheltenham, Apple’s Jade turned the tables on that rival in spectacular fashion when beating him 41 lengths into second when they next met in the Anniversary Hurdle at Aintree and then followed up at Punchestown in the Champion Four Year Old Hurdle on what proved to be her final start for Mullins.
Not only did Apple’s Jade win three Grade 1 hurdles in her first season after being switched to Elliott, she beat one of her former stablemates into second for each of those victories. She gained the first of what were to be three wins in the Hatton’s Grace Hurdle, edging out Vroum Vroum Mag by a short head in a thrilling finish, accounted for the same rival again and her stablemate Limini when winning the David Nicholson Mares’ Hurdle at Cheltenham and then beat no fewer than four Mullins-trained mares to win the Mares’ Champion Hurdle at Punchestown. In all, Apple’s Jade won a total of eleven races after joining Elliott.
Other Grade 1 winners to leave Mullins were the chasers Outlander and Valseur Lido. Outlander had begun his career with three bumper wins for Mullins before proving a smart novice, firstly over hurdles and then over fences when winning the Flogas Novices’ Chase at Leopardstown. He developed into a top-class chaser for Elliott in his second season over fences, winning the Lexus Chase from another top-class Gigginstown chaser Don Poli (he too among those switched from Mullins to Elliott) and later successful in the Champion Chase at Down Royal. Valseur Lido had won the latter race a year earlier on his first start since being moved from Mullins to Henry de Bromhead. Valseur Lido was a dual Grade 1 winner as a novice chaser for Mullins and finished second in the Ryanair Chase sponsored by Michael O’Leary.
Another future Grade 1 winner among those to depart Closutton was hurdler Petit Mouchoir. Ironically, he began his career with Elliott, winning the Goffs Land Rover Bumper at Punchestown in 2015 in the Gigginstown colours, but was sent to Mullins before he went hurdling. While his only success for Mullins came in a maiden hurdle, he was runner-up in Grade 1 company at Aintree and Punchestown later that season. Petit Mouchoir was to rejoin Elliott later in his career but he was initially among those transferred to de Bromhead and beat former stablemates Nichols Canyon and then Footpad when successful at Leopardstown in the Ryanair Hurdle and Irish Champion Hurdle.
The aforementioned Don Poli was one of the horses Mullins was able to develop from novice hurdler to top-class chaser before the Gigginstown split. He won the Martin Pipe as a novice hurdler at the 2014 Cheltenham Festival and returned a year later to win the RSA Chase, while in his second season over fences he won the Lexus Chase on the way to finishing third in the Cheltenham Gold Cup won that season by the best jumper to carry the Gigginstown colours, Don Cossack, trained by Elliott.
Mullins himself had gone close to winning a Gold Cup for Gigginstown three years earlier with Sir des Champs, the best chaser he trained for them. Sir des Champs won his first seven races after joining Mullins from France, he too winning the Martin Pipe (on just his third start over hurdles) and looking a future champion when winning the Golden Miller Novices’ Chase at the following season’s Festival. While the Cheltenham Gold Cup eluded him in 2013, that defeat to Bobs Worth came between top-class wins in the Hennessy Gold Cup at Leopardstown and the Punchestown Gold Cup where he beat the former Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Long Run.
Between them, Sir des Champs and Don Poli accounted for Gigginstown’s four Cheltenham Festival successes with Mullins, while the first Grade 1 winner for the partnership came in May 2011 when Lovethehigherlaw won the Champion Bumper at Punchestown. Un Atout, McKinley, Petite Parisienne and Blow By Blow were other Grade 1 winners, besides those already mentioned, shared by Mullins and Gigginstown.
The number of horses Mullins will be training for Gigginstown this season will be a fraction of those who departed six years ago and it remains to be seen if any of them reach the same heights as some of their predecessors, but Shanbally Kid, bought from Richard O’Brien for £190,000 after making all the running at Clonmel in April, will be a significant runner in the maroon and white when he makes his debut for his new connections later this season. In the words of Eddie O’Leary, Gigginstown’s manager, summing up the resumption of their association with Mullins, ‘it is a long road that doesn’t turn’.
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