Grade 1 Mullins bonanza at Dublin Racing Festival

As weekends go, it was one of near perfection for Willie Mullins as he trained nine winners out of the 15 races at the Dublin Racing Festival in Leopardstown across the Bank Holiday Weekend.

The Kilkenny handler is the dominant figure in Irish Racing circles currently but the fact he trained all eight Grade 1 winners over the course of the two day festival tells you the amount of firepower he has in his Closutton base currently.

Mullins aims to have his stable stars in peak condition at the Cheltenham and Punchestown Spring Festivals but the new Leopardstown innovation - now in its seventh year it attracted over 36,000 people to the Foxrock venue - has also seen a galaxy of stars from the champion trainer’s stable in recent seasons and this latest edition was no different.

The winners came in different varieties as Saturday saw a lot of his unfavoured string claim top billing, while Galopin De Champs enhanced his claims of winning back to back Cheltenham Gold Cups when retaining the Irish edition.

Sunday was a different story with three odds-on favourites El Fabiolo, Ballyburn and State Man impressively soaring to success while the match between Mullins’s own Gaelic Warrior and Fact To File saw the JP McManus-owned Fact to File upset the odds.

Away from the Grade 1 contests Willie also trained the winner of the final race of the meeting when Jody Townend took victory aboard Fleur Au Fusil in the Coolmore NH Sires Hurricane Lane Irish EBF Mares INH Flat Race.

“It’s extraordinary, everything has come together. We have tremendous owners that invest in Irish racing, and they love it,” Mullins said after State Man’s Irish Champion Hurdle win landed the Grade 1 clean sweep.

“It’s tremendous to have people like that bringing in money from abroad to put into Irish racing. We’re the beneficiaries and we’re very lucky.

“He (State Man) is a lovely racehorse. Both he and Galopin Des Champs, Fact To File and El Fabiolo have beautiful temperaments and that’s what you need, it’s half the battle in a horse.

“It means the trainer can train them the way he wants to, and the jockey can ride them the way he wants to. It makes life a lot easier for people involved,” he continued.

Willie’s results were extraordinary but he wasn’t the only Mullins to have a beano of a weekend as his nephew Danny rode three of his horses to top level success on Saturday.

Danny has the unique distinction of riding nine winners at the Dublin Racing Festival and incredibly all of them have arrived in Grade 1 contests.

Three of that tally of nine arrived on Saturday in the shape of Dancing City (Nathaniel Lacy & Partners Solicitors Novice Hurdle), Kargese (McCann Fitzgerald Spring Juvenile Hurdle) and Il Etait Temps (Goffs Irish Arkle Novice Chase).

In his true understated fashion, the 31 year-old jockey took the unlikely treble in his stride and praised Willie’stable as a whole.

“The success is more of a reflection on the people I work for and work with and they put in a lot of hard work throughout the year to get the results.

“Thankfully it happened at one of the Premier Festivals in Ireland and it’s paying good dividends.”