IF the marketing department of Horse Racing Ireland had the wherewithal to design a prototype for a young jockey to make a big splash and grasp the attention of a new generation of racegoers, they would have come up with David Mullins.

After all, he looks the part – fresh-faced with an unruly mop of hair and winning smile, he is articulate and extremely polite. It is little wonder the kids are flocking around him looking for autographs as was the case at Leopardstown last Sunday and has been the way for a little while now. And one imagines it’s not just the children looking for his attention.

Essential to the blueprint though would be ability in the saddle and Mullins is exceptional, with composure, judgement of pace, tactical soundness, style in the saddle (busy legs, quiet hands) and strength when required at the finish.

His talent was well touted by the time he won the Aintree Grand National at his first attempt last April. He was a Grade 1 winner by then, having judged the fractions to perfection on Nichols Canyon in the Morgiana Hurdle the previous November to inflict a first blot on the hitherto unblemished record of champion hurdler Faugheen.

The Goresbridge native added to his top-tier tally when getting his timing spot on again aboard Petit Mouchoir in the Irish Champion Hurdle last Sunday. That came on the back of another front-running masterpiece on Champagne West in the Thyestes Chase three days earlier. Ridestan, Sadler’s Risk, Sub Lieutenant, Alpha Des Obeaux and Brain Power have all added graded status to the burgeoning CV in the last six months alone. Success in the Liverpool blue riband brings a degree of attention that can be disorientating, and it was illuminating to watch the then teenager cope so well. As one would expect from someone whose dream as a boy was to play hurling for Kilkenny in Croke Park, they eye never left the ball.

It is notable how the momentum has been maintained and the graph continues in a northerly direction. There is clearly no issue with motivation and the people that count are on Mullins’s side.

Right now, the 20-year-old is the only jockey riding regularly for the three trainers dominating the Irish scene at the moment: his uncle Willie Mullins, Gordon Elliott and Henry de Bromhead. He is also one of the go-to men for champion owner Gigginstown House Stud, while Seven Barrows guru, Nicky Henderson has established a link recently.

PUBLICITY

So the media interest continues. But if it looks like he relishes it, that isn’t strictly true. He certainly isn’t courting publicity. He just acknowledges it as part of the job in the 21st century and is comfortable enough in front of a microphone.

“I do my fair share of whatever I have to do; interviews and stuff like that but it’s not really me wanting to do them,” he said on Monday, after a day working at the famed Doninga training establishment his father Tom runs, having taken over from David’s legendary grandfather Paddy in 2004.

“I’d probably prefer not to be doing any of them really but you have to I suppose and if you’re not being asked to do interviews you’re probably not riding winners.”

Mullins is and by the bucketload. He is well on the way to establish a career-best, sitting on just two short of the 39 victories recorded in Ireland last term as of Thursday morning.

The opportunities appear endless but the nature of his relationship with the aforementioned trainers and owners, and theirs with other riders, means that regardless of what he does on the likes of Petit Mouchoir, there is no guarantee that he will be on board when Cheltenham comes around. Even his father’s best horses are owned by J.P. McManus, who has his own stable of pilots.

He doesn’t look ahead as a rule anyway, but Cheltenham is completely out of his hands. There is a lot of juggling to take place. Some might consider it a head-wrecking scenario but only a fool could make a negative from such connections.

“It’s great to be riding for them. I’m very lucky and privileged. I’m lucky to have the support of trainers and owners like that. You do the work for them and if you do get the results, they will continue to use you. I’ve just been very lucky.”

The good news is that the likes of McManus and Gigginstown throw a lot of darts at races, and so do Elliott and Mullins. Meanwhile, he is the first on de Bromhead’s list with Andrew Lynch having been sidelined with a fractured arm since the end of August. It is a reminder of how quickly things can turn in this sport and all that is predicted for him indeed is reliant on how fortunate he is with injuries.

“That’s the way it works out, yeah. I was very lucky that Henry came to me in Galway and asked me to come down and ride out a day a week. He said ‘I think it’ll be worth your while if you do’. So I did and it’s been great since.

“Henry’s horses are running great this year and he’s getting more. He’s expanding the whole time. He’s more horses, bigger owners and a better class of animal. He’s taking every opportunity and done everything right.”

The call from Henderson to ride Brain Power in a valuable Grade 3 handicap hurdle (£85,425 to the winner) at Ascot last December came out of the blue.

“I rode Brain Power in the novice hurdle at Punchestown and was delighted to get it. He ran a cracker there behind Petit Mouchoir. I was lucky that I got the phone call back to go and ride for him. I had good success with Brain Power so far.

“He winged the last (at Ascot) and idled up the run-in so hopefully he’s in the same boat as Petit Mouchoir and he keeps improving. Hopefully he’ll run again on Saturday, things will go great and hopefully he might be a Champion Hurdle horse.”

If Brain Power has to step up to be a contender, Petit Mouchoir is firmly in the mix as a dual Grade 1 winner. Last Sunday’s success came as he galloped the gritty Nichols Canyon into submission for the second time in under five weeks. The proximity of Footpad might have been viewed negatively initially but some shrewd observers have noted how Mullins took a while to pull his charge up after the finishing line. The six-year-old wasn’t running out of gas.

“I jumped off and just sat against him. That’s what it was the whole way until we straightened up when I gave him a squeeze and he stayed galloping all the way to the line.

“I’d say Footpad is not a bad horse. He won a Grade 1. He beat Let’s Dance, Ivanovich Gorbatov and Jer’s Girl as well this time last year. So on that form, he’s not a bad horse and he was ridden to run well.”

It was a different experience to the Morgiana, in that there was no expectation that Nichols Canyon would turn Faugheen over. The lens was focussed very firmly on him for the entire build-up this time, so it was satisfying for it to go without a hitch. Elsewhere, Champagne West has emerged as a dark horse for an open-looking Gold Cup. He slaughtered his rivals in the Thyestes on a day when Mullins and de Bromhead combined for a double.

If the Gowran Park feature is not a renowned trial for the most prestigious prize in jump racing, it has produced two runners-up in On His Own and Djakadam in 2014 and 2015, while another Willie Mullins charge, Hedgehunter would fill the bridesmaid’s role in 2006, two years after his Noreside success. Can Champagne West be a Gold Cup horse?

“Of course he can. He’s won a three-mile handicap chase off 154. Djakadam won it off 145; that’s nine pounds less. I think the horse is getting better and better and definitely deserves a crack at a three-mile Grade 1.

“He’s a galloper and the ground was probably a bit quick for him that day. Henry has always stressed the point to me that he needs to be sat quiet on and leave his confidence build up. I was delighted to see him coming out of my hinds like that because he’s never done that before. Normally he’s careful and I think he’s still improving and getting more confidence jumping from whatever Henry is doing with him at home.”

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WHAT makes Mullins’s meteoric rise so interesting is that he never wanted to be a jockey. One recalls Ruby Walsh saying at a function recently that he was a relative latecomer to riding, only really getting into it seriously at around 10 or 11. David Mullins was 16.

In his mind’s eye, the colours on his back were black and amber, not maroon and white. Somehow, the family business – no, that’s underplaying it – the family history had left little or no imprint on him. His mother Helen’s show jumping background as a member of the renowned Hughes clan carried much more sway. But it was hurling that consumed him.

Then a few things happened. The realisation dawned that he would never make it as an elite hurler, no matter how much he put into it. Meanwhile, school wasn’t offering up many options in terms of a future pay cheque.

If there was a Damascene moment however, it was Bob Lingo winning the Galway Plate in 2012, a couple of months after Mullins’s 16th birthday. Trained by his father, the McManus-owned gelding was extremely quirky and had to be ridden out on his own. At the beginning of that year, Mullins Snr gave the responsibility of doing so to his son over the weekends. He won the Dan Moore Chase at Fairyhouse in April and everything from that point was directed at Galway.

When the summer holidays kicked in, the partnership became a daily one. David led Bob Lingo up on the big day and when Mark Walsh steered him home, the Pauline conversion was complete.

“We probably wouldn’t have the Galway Plate without David,” said Tom in the Irish Racing Yearbook 2017. “They got on so well together. He was a difficult horse but David made him easy to train.”

The flame that flickered through that summer was now well and truly ablaze. He took out an amateur licence and rode his first winner the following February on the Dick Donohoe-trained Rathvawn Belle. He turned professional at the end of 2014 and made rapid strides. He still loves hurling but racing is the obsession now.

“When you start off at 16, you start to get your first rides, it really sucks you in and you want nothing more. I still feel the same way as I do when I was 16 as regards how much more you want and how much better you want to be. I want to keep going, keep improving, get more of it and get better.”

That latter part is important to him and is probably the secret behind his level-headedness. How much better does he think he is from 12 months ago?

“I reckon I’m improving since last week. Every day since I started. I hope I’m a better rider this week than I was last week and it’ll be the same next week.

“You look at everything. You look back at a race you rode three weeks ago and then you have a look at the one you rode yesterday and things pop up in your mind, where you can see where you can improve.

“You mightn’t know you’ve done anything wrong the day after but when you go back and look at it in three weeks’ time you can see it all again. And that’s when you really see the difference, when you look back on the races you rode from two months ago, and a month ago.”

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RULE The World will not bid to defend his Aintree crown this year, having been retired. Mullins is honest enough to admit that he had mixed emotions upon hearing the news.

“I was glad to see him pack it in in one piece. I won’t say I was glad to see him retire! You’ll go a long way to find as good a spin around in a Grand National I’d say again.”

He would have been running off a much higher weight had he returned to Liverpool, although there was the possibility that he might have made a successful step up to graded company. Could he have won another National?

“Could he have won another National? I think that’s not really a fair question. Who knows what’s going to happen in a National? He had broken his pelvis in two separate incidents. It was probably the right idea (to retire him) rather than take the chance.

“The National is a very difficult race to win, even if you are the best horse, or the best handicapped horse, the best jumper, or if you have the best jockey or are trained by the best trainer, you still mightn’t win it. You need an awful lot of luck. As you said, it’s great to see he’s in one piece anyway and looking well in retirement.”

Just getting horses to the track on a fixed date is so difficult and taken for granted by the general public. Many Clouds, Vautour, Faugheen, Annie Power, Don Cossack… the list goes on and on and on of equine giants that meet with setbacks or worse. Mullins is quick to point to the contribution of the stable staff in ensuring that everything is right with the inmates.

“The staff nearly put their lives into these horses. I know John Codd would never miss a day to leave anyone else ride Faugheen in Willie’s. The same in Henry’s and Gordon’s. They all live for their horses. It’s great to see. Without them looking after them horses, it’d be a different game.”

As for Mullins himself, the future looks incandescent but he is singing from the same hymn sheet as Kilkenny manager Brian Cody. One at the time is the motto, with maybe one goal in there that would trump anything he had ever done before.

“I have no real targets. I never did. I’d love to win as many races as I can. If there was one thing I really would love to do it would be to ride a big winner for my father somewhere. That would be a goal alright.”

The way he’s going, you wouldn’t bet against him achieving it.