WITH a total of 40 races run across five days, there is rarely a shortage of talking points to emerge from the Punchestown Festival.

As the dust settles on the 2023/’24 National Hunt campaign, below are a selection of takeaways from the season’s finale meeting.

Victory for Il Etait Temps on day three saw Willie Mullins break his own world record of 34 Grade 1 wins in a single season, and that haul reached 39 top-level winners by the end of the week. It hammered home just how sensational a term it’s been for the Closutton team.

There are 37 Grade 1s in Ireland alone each season. In the latest campaign Mullins won 25 of them, while also finishing second in seven of the 12 top-level events he did not win.

Without taking anything away from Mullins’ remarkable achievements, is 37 Grade 1 races for a single jurisdiction too many? It seems like a particularly high number when these events are designed to be for the very best of the best.

In France, there are just nine National Hunt Grade 1s each season. Food for thought.

Despite having won 10 Grade 1s, including a Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham - and Constitution Hill being the only horse to beat him since joining Willie Mullins - State Man still appears to be underrated to a certain degree.

The dual Cheltenham Festival winner made it five wins from five starts at the highest level this season in the Boodles Champion Hurdle, yet he remains just the third favourite to successfully defend his Cheltenham crown next spring in the Unibet Champion Hurdle.

If current 2/1 favourite Constitution Hill reappears in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle this autumn after a series of health issues, he will have made just three starts in the 705 days prior to the Newcastle Grade 1.

Lossiemouth, priced between 5/2 and 7/2, is already shorter with the majority of firms for the Champion Hurdle than State Man. She oozes class, but the best geldings she has beaten in her career are Zarak The Brave (rated 152), Rubaud (147), First Street (140) and Nusret (139).

The ridiculously consistent State Man, a top-priced 9/2 third favourite for the 2025 Champion Hurdle, will undoubtedly present a stiffer test than she has faced against the boys so far, for all that she remains open to improvement. The Donnellys’ 169-rated star deserves more fanfare than he tends to get.

It appeared to get some people’s goats earlier this season that A Dream To Share was still eligible to run in the Grade 2 Future Stars Bumper at the Dublin Racing Festival - a year on from his five-win bumper season, which included back-to-back Grade 1 victories.

What about Redemption Day then? He was able to run in, and readily win, last week’s Grade 1 Race & Stay At Punchestown Champion Bumper at the age of seven.

It was a whole 855 days between his bumper debut and this impressive success - his third bumper win on his seventh bumper start. As a broad comparison, State Man made his debut for Willie Mullins only two days earlier than Redemption Day and has long graduated from junior ranks.

Should a horse with such experience in bumpers - a debut winner in December 2021 - be eligible to line up in the premier bumper of the season in 2024? I’m not convinced they should.

We’ve seen the British authorities move in recent seasons to limit horses to a maximum of three runs in bumpers, though fourth and fifth possible runs can be allowed if running in certain blacktype bumpers, while six-year-olds cannot run in bumpers after the final day of the season.

The only seven-year-old running in the extended-two-mile-and-two-furlong bumper on day four, Don’tstopthemusic, also came out on top against younger rivals at Punchestown.

Bumpers ought to help young National Hunt horses progress on their way to a career over obstacles. Allowing high-class, older runners with bundles of experience to cash in on the only Grade 1 bumper of the season in Ireland seems to defeat the purpose of having these races.

What a few weeks of mixed signals it’s been for the two-mile chasing division.

El Fabiolo squandered what looked a golden chance when blundering and pulled up in the Queen Mother Champion Chase at Cheltenham as 2/9 favourite, unable to capitalise on the absence of reigning champion Energumene (out for the season due to injury) and main challenger Jonbon (withdrawn due to concerns over Nicky Henderson’s stable form).

Captain Guinness gained his first Grade 1 win in that Cheltenham prize and was presented with a decent opportunity to make it back-to-back victories in the William Hill Champion Chase at Punchestown last week. However, Banbridge - reverting to two miles for the first time in over a year - mowed him down late on and spoiled the homecoming party.

Dinoblue, a Grade 1 winner in this division earlier in the campaign, was actually sent off the well-backed 11/10 favourite but didn’t appear to have many obvious excuses in third.

As for matters in Britain, Jonbon gave the impression he could excel at mid-range trips or further when winning the Melling Chase over two and a half miles at Aintree before dropping back to the minimum distance and having too much for a below-best El Fabiolo in the Celebration Chase.

End-of-season form sometimes needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, but these results have made the waters plenty murky regarding what we can expect in this division heading into next term.

Often there can be a top novice chaser ready to put it up to the very best senior horses a season later, and Gaelic Warrior gave the impression it might be him when gliding to Arkle success in March.

However, he too blotted his copybook when getting turned over as 1/3 favourite in the Barberstown Castle Novice Chase on day three.

Arkle absentee Marine Nationale also showed immense potential early in the season but will return next season with questions to answer following his Dublin Racing Festival blowout. If the 14/1 chance for next year’s Champion Chase can prove that Leopardstown flop was a one-off when returning in the 2024/’25 campaign, perhaps he could develop into the biggest threat to the established names in the division.

To see the battered and bruised frames of Jack Kennedy and Paul Townend walking in and out of the parade ring at Punchestown last week, you’d have thought the pair had been going blow for blow in a mixed martial arts cage all season, not race-riding at the highest level.

It was evident that they were riding through their fair share of physical pain from injuries accumulated in recent weeks. How well they performed in the circumstances.

In fact, the extent to which Kennedy was fighting injury became apparent when he arrived with his foot in a boot for the final day of the season he was suspended for. Likewise, Townend was still serving up spectacular rides right to the very end - notably on Kargese in the Ballymore Champion Four Year Old Hurdle - having taken a thumping fall on the Wednesday night from James Du Berlais. These riders are made of serious steel.

There was a massive outpouring of goodwill towards Kennedy on the final day, with a general appreciation around the track for the series of major injuries he has overcome to get to this point in his career. He will have plenty of time to recover in the coming weeks, having begun serving a total of 30 days in whip suspensions last Saturday.

The good camaraderie between himself and Townend has been clear through the title race, and when Kennedy’s suspension was mentioned in a Racing TV interview with Kevin O’Ryan, the former champion quipped: “I’ll take a little break now but Jack is suspended and we’ll try to get a march on him. Maybe he’ll get an abacus or something, will he?”

Top-class, hard-as-nails riders, and good sports to boot. Take a bow, gents.