THERE were a lot of broad smiles around Punchestown last Saturday and not just among connections, as racing folk were genuinely pleased to see Tony Mullins train his first winner of the National Hunt season thanks to Glencairn View and Liam Quinlan justifying 4/1 favouritism in the Amateur National.

Of course this is racing, and so the much-fancied Shannak fell for the first time in 23 races under rules the following day at Fairyhouse, the venue of the gelding’s three victories. They don’t lie when they say it would tame lions.

Mullins has had to change the focus of his operation significantly in recent years. From the time he took out his training licence in 1987 at just 26 and promptly recorded his first winner, Clever Christian in the Birdcatcher Nursery at Naas, he was up and running.

The following year, Afford A King won the Galway Plate. Between 1988-89 and 2007-08, he only failed to reach double figures once over jumps. Supreme Developer and Barrow Drive were Grade 1 winners, Pedrobob triumphant in the County Hurdle at Cheltenham, and Kharasar, The Last Stand, McGruders Cross and Aranleigh among other graded-race victors. Suddenly, his fortunes plummeted with six winners in 2008-09 and he has been at around that level since.

At his peak, he would never have had more than 40 horses but only houses around 12 now for racing, with another dozen or so being pre-trained for his brother Willie.

The latter arrangement is a relatively recent one. The horses were nearly always for sale anyway – Felix Yonger and Roi Des Francs are two that moved on to have very successful careers with big brother after being schooled by Mullins. With training no longer covering the bills for Tony, Willie could send some work his way, confident given his direct experience with the likes of Felix Yonger, that he was capable of educating youngsters in the right fashion.

STRAIGHT TALKING

It isn’t how Mullins dreamed it would go, but he accepts it. He has his niche and is doing okay. There are many that aren’t however, and the straight-talking 56-year-old points both barrels at the Work Relations Commission and government officials before warning that he knows of two high-profile trainers who will not renew their licences next month.

And he points the finger of blame squarely at the decision to no longer consider training racehorses an agricultural pursuit, leading to serious staffing issues that are worsening all the time. Racing has to fight back, he argues.

“Racing. Is. Agricultural.” He says it like that, as three separate words to emphasise it.

“The WRC can say what they like, racing is agricultural… We tend to animals – more intensively – but we tend to animals and it’s a seven-day, seven-night-a-week job. For those people who work from Monday to Friday to tell us what our business is, is very insulting. I’m sure sense will have to prevail. They just can’t drum something down our neck. It is an agricultural business and that’s that.

“You’re gonna see some very surprising ones not renewing their licence next month. I know two high-profile ones that aren’t going to renew their licence. Men that have trained several Cheltenham and Grade 1 winners are not renewing their licence because they can’t get staff. I don’t wanna be naming them but I know a man who’s trained several Cheltenham winners and champions.

“Himself and his wife are both well over retirement age and they’re both mucking out horses. They can’t get staff. The whole thing is absolutely crazy. It’s a pity that the likes of these people will have to retire to show our politicians the serious plight that we’re in because of these EU rules.”

Given the failure of Ballydoyle in their appeal against compliance orders issued by the WRC, it doesn’t seem likely that racing’s status will be redefined but Mullins believes that there is no alternative.

“It will have to be changed back. We are a 24-7 business. It’s lovely for them to think we work from two o’clock to five o’clock of a race day and that’s how ignorant they are about our game.

“Our horses are checked every night at midnight. For those people to try and drum down our necks what we do, it’s very, very insulting and I got violently mad… for them to tell us what we are and we working seven days and seven nights a week.

“They’re making it harder because they want to fit it into a lovely little category that suits something that they’re doing but it’s not going to be stood for. It’s gonna obviously now take a big row to put things back where they should be.”

He considers Charlie Swan, Joanna Morgan, Colm Murphy, Sandra Hughes and others no longer training as victims of staffing issues rather than the recession.

“We used to make a reasonable living. Now we’re existing. I put all my life into building this place so I can’t just close it down but we’re making no money. We’re working twice as hard just to stay where we are but anyway, I don’t mind that. It’s a little frustrating not to be making money but it doesn’t unnecessarily worry me. But I’ll tell you one thing; I won’t have them tell me what type of business I have. I know what type of business I have and it is agricultural.”

Bobby McCarthy owner of Glencarin View with Tony Mullins

Photo HEALY RACING.

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The other major problem racing must contend with he argues, is the proliferation of Gigginstown - and J.P. McManus-owned horses in the major jumps handicaps in Ireland.

Mullins maintains that prospective owners that used to target having a runner in those contests are no longer investing because the chances of that happening have reduced significantly.

Indeed he claims that Gigginstown ran at least some of their 13 horses in the Irish Grand National for the sole purpose of keeping others with chances out of the race and says that this level of alleged control is detrimental to racing. It is why he intends focussing more on the flat.

“The opportunities are there in jumping but they’re being taken by the two powerhouses. And I don’t mind that. For years, there was always Tom Dreaper, then (Tony’s father) Paddy Mullins, Paddy Sleator, Eddie O’Grady – they farmed the top races – but I am seriously against these two sets of colours being allowed to run 10 apiece in the Paddy Power, the Galway Plate, the Kerry National.

“I just think it’s absolutely ruining the game at a phenomenal speed. The ordinary owner that would love to give 30 grand for a horse and see – he knows, is probably a better word – but definitely feels that he can’t compete.

“I think that no owner or trainer should be allowed run more than four in the one race and let them fight it out. This thing of completely obliterating the Irish National last year was an absolute circus.

“Horses that pulled-up shortly after half way; they’d absolutely no chance. Their only purpose there was to keep other horses out. I’m vehemently against that and I voiced my opinion long before the race was ever run ‘cos I knew what was going to happen.

“I knew in January that there were certain horses to run in that race, not to have any chance in the race but to make sure that other horses didn’t get in. And the form book showed that… they pulled-up quite early in the race.

“This just has to be stopped if our game wants to continue and people feel they have a fighting chance of winning. This can’t be allowed to go on. But anyway, I voiced me opinion, I got nowhere so I’ll go off and try the flat.”

CONNECTIONS

It will not be alien to him. Apart from that opening Birdcatcher success, he recorded a career-high 13 winners on the level in 2003 and memorably gave his then 17-year-old son Danny victory in the Galway Mile on Rock And Roll Kid six years after.

Indeed last August, Punked won a Curragh maiden and the three and a half-length second, Liquid Amber came out to bag the Group 3 Flame Of Tara Stakes just eight days later. Punked was sold to race in America since and the reports to date suggest that the new connections are very happy with how she has settled and come on.

“We have four horses just turned two now so we’ll see if they can give us a bit of fun again this year.”

Glencairn View and Liam Quinlan (right) jump the last to win the Connolly Red Mills Amateur National Handicap Steeplechase

Glencairn View is the one carrying the big dreams though. “He’s been an unlucky horse I suppose. We just couldn’t find a three-mile for him. We were at two-two and two-five, which wasn’t suitable. When we got the three-one he showed how he jumps and stays. That’s his strong point. He got an 8lb penalty which puts him on 120 and I’m hoping now that that would put him in at the bottom in the National Trial back (at Punchestown) on Sunday, the 11th of February. It’s three and a half miles and I think the extra three furlongs will actually show him in a better light.”

Glencairn View had disappointed him initially when touched off at Tramore before Christmas but it was evident that the track was just too sharp. All part of the learning curve. And speaking of learning curves, young pilot Liam Quinlan has certainly met with Mullins’s approval.

“He rode a horse that wasn’t even placed in Leopardstown and his analysis after the race impressed me. He was an old head on young shoulders. I thought he had a good grasp of what was going on around him which is usually the mark of a good jockey.”

Danny has risen through the ranks since his Galway heroics, impressively rebuilding his career after hitting a potential roadblock when losing his job as first jockey to Barry Connell.

“He’s a grafter. He works hard at it and hopefully he’ll get on a star horse and that’ll really open it out but he’s earning a fairly good living. He’s a top class jockey, as is (his cousin) David. They’re flying and long may it last. What they need now is a class horse and away they go.”

Tony’s experience of losing the ride on the brilliant mare Dawn Run for the 1986 Gold Cup helped when it came to counselling his distraught son.

“I remember when he came home that evening and he was in shock after losing the job and I said ‘Don’t worry. When I lost the ride on Dawn Run I thought it would be the end of the world and I was champion jockey after that.’ Life goes on, you just have to deal with it and he dealt with it well.”

That champion jockey title is a bit of a sore point, in that it fell between the cracks with the season being changed from calendar to what we have now.

He had shared the title with Frank Berry in 1984 and to win it again in 1988-89, while also training was quite a feat. It isn’t why he is disappointed that there is no acknowledgement of it officially however. It is that being part of a unique achievement that is never likely to be replicated is not in the record books.

THREE CHAMPIONS

“The part that’s irritating is that Willie was champion amateur that year and my father was champion trainer. It’s just a phenomenal record that we were the three champions and it seems to be not in the official records.

Willie and Tony Mullins at the Dawn Run statue at Cheltenham

They went straight from Tommy Carmody being champion in ’88 to the ’89-90 (when the Charlie Swan period of dominance began). I have the picture here of Simon Walford, who I think was the National Hunt Steward of the time, presenting me with the champion jockey’s trophy so it did happen!”

The famous match with Buck House stands out from his many victories on board Dawn Run but it is netting the first prize of IR£186,000 on Grabel in the Dueling Grounds International Hurdle at Kentucky in 1990 – the richest race of the 20th century – that ranks as his career highlight in the plate. Of course Paddy was ahead of his time when it came to chasing big pots abroad, particularly with National Hunt horses.

WATERGATE

“I remember him going to Washington for the Washington DC International with Hurry Harriet, who won the Champion Stakes.

“It was around the time of the Watergate scandal. I can remember Nixon was only after resigning. So he went to America when we thought England was absolutely completely foreign. He went to America two years before that with a chaser, a great horse called Herring Gull that had won the Irish National and the RSA. So he wasn’t afraid to travel when he had the horse.”

Neither is his mother Maureen, who he reports to have just returned from a holiday in Mexico. She is 88, not that you’d have a clue. She is proud of all her children and grandchildren naturally, but you would imagine she might just get that little bit more of a kick out of it if Glencairn View was to land a really big pot for Tony – especially if Danny is doing the steering.

“It’s exciting to have a horse like Glencairn because if he improves... I don’t ever see him as a Gold Cup horse but he just could be a National horse and that’s our dream.”

One horse could change everything.

“I’ve seen it do it for trainers in the past. I believe that this lad is going to be competitive in staying handicap chases over a distance and it’s exciting because Bobby McCarthy, who owns him and bred him, I don’t think he’s going to sell him.

“Most horses we have are here to be sold to make financial sense of it but Bobby, I think, at his age now, is quite happy to have a horse for himself, which makes life easier for me because I’m making a long-term plan instead of trying to get something quick.”

The good humour is never far away. It is the healthiest way to approach life and it has helped him deal with the many setbacks that are inevitable in this game. Having celebrated his 56th birthday on Wednesday, there is no going back now.

“I’ll put it this way. I can’t very well open my chemist shop again or anything, you know what I mean? I’m the wrong side of 50. What else do I do?

“Not that I’m happy with it but I haven’t much option now only to try and run my farm in a way that we earn a living. It’s not as exciting as it was but we’re earning a living and quite happy.”