IF proof was needed that no two days are ever the same in the world of horse racing, last Sunday and Monday came as quite the example.

After Fact To File crossed the line in isolation as the only finisher in a two-runner Grade 1 Ladbrokes Novice Chase, groans over the worrying health of National Hunt racing grew louder and louder during a Dublin Racing Festival utterly dominated by one stable.

It became the second Grade 1 match race in Ireland this century, and, by my reckoning at least, the first time that we have seen a top-level prize made up entirely of Willie Mullins-trained runners.

To add to the feeling of an increasingly uneven jumping scene, Mullins plundered each of the meeting’s eight Grade 1s, punters had to face into some unappealing betting races that featured winning favourites at 1/3, 4/11, 2/5 and 10/11, and the average field size for the Grade 1s came in at a measly six runners.

That includes just four-runner fields in the Paddy Power Irish Gold Cup and Chanelle Pharma Irish Champion Hurdle – races billed as the weekend’s main events.

Given the feeling of woe surrounding those facets of the sport, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d been transported into a different universe if rocking up at Tattersalls Ireland on Monday afternoon for an enthralling Caldwell Construction dispersal sale.

Demand for National Hunt horses – the vast majority of which had no breeding value – was remarkably strong. The whole sale painted a much different picture to the one you could have gleaned from the weekend’s results at Leopardstown. A whopping €5.29 million was spent across the 29 lots, averaging out at €182,414 per horse.

For good measure, it seemed as though there were nearly more members of the public watching the action unfold at the Fairyhouse complex than you’d find at some mid-week race meetings. The Bank Holiday Monday sale captured the racing public’s attention.

Strong interest

Given the new owners of most of the six-figure purchases will likely never come close to recouping some of the prices they paid, the trade was an indicator of just how high interest levels remain for connections trying to succeed in National Hunt racing. They are dying to chase the dream with a top-level jumper.

Prize money might be pathetically low in many instances in Britain, rising costs for yards are making training fees more expensive than was the case in years gone by, a bloated race programme on both sides of the Irish Sea is failing to deliver many of the clashes racing fans want to see, and there are worrying governmental challenges for the sport to overcome in the two jurisdictions…Yet there is still an apparent abundance of owners out there willing to spend damn good money on horses.

Our year-round infatuation and focus on the Cheltenham Festival might be unhealthy in one respect in terms of the sport’s very best horses not running against each other as often as we’d like before Cheltenham, but the dream of a Festival winner is helping to sustain other facets of the game in terms of trading and investment in new stock.

An element of the dispersal that pricked my ears was just how willing other trainers were to spend significant money in buying horses from a premier-quality operation such as Gordon Elliott’s.

Cullentra excellence

There’s every chance a replication of many of these runners’ best form for the Cullentra team will be enough to win more races for their new connections, but the chances of substantial improvement for leaving a top-notch operator like Elliott is surely unlikely. It’s difficult to remember instances where horses have progressed dramatically after leaving his care, which is testament to just how effective he is at priming and placing his string. Having said that, many of the Caldwell horses sold on Monday have age on their side.

Losing a last-time-out Grade 1 winner like Caldwell Potter, a promising juvenile such as Mighty Bandit and a recent Grade 2 winner like Imagine will have come as a blow to Elliott just a month before the Cheltenham Festival, but he has proven time and time again that he is able to overcome setbacks that could have sunk other operators.

Despite losing owners like Cheveley Park Stud after the dead-horse photograph saga in 2021, and Simon Munir and Isaac Souede later that year following a BBC Panorama feature, he has rebuilt determinedly and will no doubt be hungrier than ever after the Caldwell exit to assemble a stronger squad. His resilience is highly impressive. Continually putting it up to Willie Mullins is a massive challenge that will be on his hands for some time to come, especially considering how the champion trainer’s string is somehow apparently getting stronger each season.

Just imagine the sort of sums involved if an owner as important as Caldwell was to Elliott decided to exit the game from Mullins’ yard. With Caldwell Potter fetching €740,000, what would Ballyburn (rated 6lb superior according to Timeform ratings) fetch in a similar sale pre-Cheltenham? The figures could be absolutely frightening.

Mullins squad depth

According to Horse Racing Ireland’s RÁS website listings, Mullins is responsible for the four top-rated chasers in the country at present, and three of the top five hurdlers. He trains four of the nine highest-rated novice hurdlers in Britain or Ireland, according to Timeform, and four of the eight best novice chasers in those jurisdictions too. The depth to his squad is simply stunning.

Perhaps it would never take off as so many of the best horses are housed in the same stables, and it’s probably fair to say that their owners are predominantly not sellers, but a marquee sale on the eve of the Cheltenham Festival would make for fascinating viewing if last Monday at Tattersalls is anything to go by. There is, of course, the Tattersalls Cheltenham Festival Sale that falls after racing on the Thursday at Prestbury Park, but one in the style of the Goffs London Sale pre-Royal Ascot that relates to horses with Cheltenham entries that week could be intriguing – obviously depending on whether there is sufficient horsepower to make it worthwhile.

That is a query for bloodstock brains well above mine to debate, but the career of Caldwell Potter is one that will be watched a whole lot more closely by the casual racing fan in the aftermath of this headline sale.