Willie Mullins Cheltenham Festival team: Four key takeaways
Tony McFadden provides four key takeaways from Willie Mullins' exclusive Cheltenham Festival Stable Tour with Sporting Life.
Ballyburn earns Faugheen comparison
We're no nearer to finding out Ballyburn's Cheltenham Festival target – a mention of his stout pedigree was quickly counteracted by reference to his slick jumping and speed – but he'll be a worthy favourite in the Sky Bet Supreme or Baring Bingham.
Ballyburn was described by Mullins in his early-season stable tour as looking like a 'top-notcher', so he's clearly been held in high regard for some time. But it was still interesting to hear a comparison with Faugheen, who is the highest-rated hurdler trained by Mullins with a peak Timeform figure of 176.
Mullins said: "He reminds me of Faugheen in the way he can gallop and jump. If he met a hurdle wrong he'd just gallop right through it, he has that sort of attitude, he just puts the head down and goes at everything. He's very brave. This fellow has it all, I think."
While comparisons with Faugheen give some insight into how highly Ballyburn is rated, they sadly don't offer much clue on running plans as Faugheen was a notably versatile sort who won Grade 1s at two miles, three miles and in between!
Strength in depth means there are exciting prospects at big prices
With so much focus inevitably on the likes of Ballyburn, Tullyhill and Mystical Power it's easy to overlook the unexposed and exciting prospects that in other yards would be stable stars and receiving plenty of interest.
One such horse is Mistergif, an 18-length winner of a maiden hurdle at Limerick on his first start since joining the yard from France.
Mistergif wasn't any great shakes on the Flat – he's still a maiden after nine starts in that sphere – and he also failed to win in a couple of hurdle races at Auteuil. However, like many before him, he's seemingly a much-improved performer now with Mullins and the trainer clearly feels there's more to come based on something at Limerick that wouldn't have been picked up in conventional analysis.
Mullins said: "Most of the horses that came by the winning post that day had stopped by the time they'd got to the gate of the stable yard but Kieran [Callaghan] couldn't get a pull out of this fellow. He went all the way around the bend and it wasn't until he got to the next hurdle in the back straight that he got a chance to pull him up. That screams a real good horse to me."
He holds entries for the Sky Bet Supreme and Baring Bingham and would be lively outsider in either event, with the Timeform Large P attached to his rating denoting that he's open to significant improvement.
Is Sa Majeste this year's State Man?
Sa Majeste isn't a novice like State Man was when landing the 2022 County Hurdle; he won't even be running in the same race that his stablemate took apart. However, it would be no surprise were Sa Majeste – who holds entries in the Coral Cup and Martin Pipe – to also prove a graded horse in a handicap given how positively Mullins spoke about him.
Not explicitly because of State Man – but probably in part due to his easy victory – the rules regarding participation in good-quality handicaps were changed so that horses weren’t eligible to run unless they had competed in at least four races over hurdles, rather than three.
That understandable change was to give the handicapper more information to produce an accurate rating in the interest of fairness to all competitors. However, Sa Majeste's profile of two starts in France, a flop when well backed at Punchestown on his debut for Mullins and a smooth success in a four-runner conditions race still didn't give the assessor much to go on ahead of Cheltenham!
A pessimistic interpretation of Sa Majeste's Limerick success would be that a maiden who has been stuffed on his two subsequent starts was only nine and a half lengths back in third. A much more positive take, however, would be that Sa Majeste, in dreadful conditions, readily brushed aside a notably strong stayer in Grand National winner Noble Yeats.
You could work out that Sa Majeste is held in high regard by the Mullins yard based purely on the fact he was sent off as 13/8 favourite at Punchestown on his first start for the stable, but the way his trainer described him was still eye-opening.
"He could be anything this horse – the day I bought him I thought he could be our next Gold Cup horse," said Mullins.
Has You Oughta Know been overlooked in Champion Bumper betting?
You Oughta Know is behind a quintet of unbeaten rivals in the Champion Bumper betting, including a couple from his own stable, but defeat in the Future Stars Bumper at Leopardstown did little to dent his credentials, certainly in the mind of his trainer.
Mullins, who has won three of the last four renewals and a remarkable 12 editions in total, has yet to finalise his Champion Bumper squad. But it is going to be a numerically strong one given he has sent out eight winners in the division since the turn of the year alone, while there have been plenty of others who have shown notable promise in defeat.
Amidst all the potential, however, it is You Oughta Know who Mullins feels sets the standard on form among team Closutton after his effort at the Dublin Racing Festival where he was attempting to give 3 lb to the winner, the now-sidelined Jeroboam Machin.
Perhaps You Oughta Know, a 9/1 chance, has been underestimated because it's felt his recent defeat puts a limit on the ceiling of his ability, or maybe it's because he started out in the summer at Kilbeggan and Galway. However, You Oughta Know is right at the top of the Mullins pecking order – and a couple of starts in the summer clearly didn't do last year's winner A Dream To Share any harm.
Mullins said: “I don't know who Patrick will ride but to me You Oughta Know would be the form horse. You Oughta Know and Jasmin de Vaux are probably the top two.”
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