WHEN Patrick Mullins came through the gloomy fog to win the 2008 Champion Bumper on Cousin Vinny, it was a magic moment.

First Cheltenham winner, first Grade 1 winner, riding for his father and doing it all at just 18 years of age. That’s magic alright.

But what made it even more magical was that it all came under the premonition that he was on borrowed time. He was tall as a teenager and Willie had told him that his career as a jockey might only last two or three seasons, so make the most of it.

Fast forward 15 years and Patrick Mullins is top of the jumps jockeys’ table with 34 wins and a remarkable strike rate of 55%. Seven more Cheltenham Festival wins have followed. Twenty-two more Grade 1s. Fifteen champion amateur titles. The record for number of winners for an amateur rider in a calendar year. And, as of last month, 770 more wins brought up the milestone of 800.

He will be the first to tell you that his position is highly privileged and that most riders could have achieved what he has done given the opportunities. That is likely very true. Ever since that second season in his career, Willie has been champion trainer, and if anything, his father’s influence in Ireland and at Cheltenham seems to be getting stronger.

But it’s also likely true that Patrick Mullins is a top class rider who has maxed out on the excellent opportunities presented to him, and while he has already achieved so much, there is still plenty left to do.

“I love having something to aim for,” he says this week. “I’ve always enjoyed reading and looking back on history. Even when I was in school I’d look at the 800 and 1500 metre records every year and think of how I could get to that standard. I’d be looking at the pacemakers and working out the sectionals.

“Riding for my father’s stable I have the opportunity to do a lot, so I want to do as much as I can. I like to have something to aim for as opposed to just going week to week.

“Tony Sweeney would have mentioned to my father about Billy Parkinson’s record number of winners in a calendar year. Tony was a real historian of racing and he wrote a fabulous book (The Sweeney Guide to the Irish Turf from 1501 - 2001). I always found it fascinating looking back and reading what has been done before.

“It’s good to have goals and it was super to get to 800 winners. When you start riding, you want to ride your first winner, then you want to lose your claim, then you want to ride more winners than Willie, then to get to Ted Walsh’s record of 545 and of course it would be great now to get to 1000.

“I know Derek (O’Connor) and Jamie (Codd) have got to 1000 in point-to-points, so to do it on the track would be very special. Hopefully we’ll get there and a few more with a bit of luck.”

And why wouldn’t you keep going for as long as possible in his position? Liam Burke recently featured on RTÉ’s Nationwide programme for riding a winner at 66, literally twice Mullins’ age. Don’t write it off.

Good

For now, things have hardly been as good. The 33-year-old has never had as many National Hunt winners at this stage of the season, even in the season that fell during the record-breaking year where his 74 winners broke Billy Parkinson’s record (72) for amateur winners in a calendar year, set in 1915.

But that torpedo start doesn’t mean he is aiming to break a new record of wins. He’s a different rider than the 22-year-old that gunned so hard to chase down Parkinson’s record, as now the vast majority of his 21 professional rides are saved for the biggest races on the calendar.

What has changed slightly is his general mentality to riding.

“I think I have a bit more balance with regard to doing things out of racing now,” he explains. “I went to a wedding recently for a friend of mine from school and I missed three winners that weekend. In my 20s I wouldn’t have done that and I would say since I’ve come into my 30s, I’m a bit more balanced on doing stuff outside of racing as well.

“I would have never skied since I started riding because I never wanted to get injured but now my view is I don’t want to not ski until I’m 40. I found as I’ve got older I’m not too narrowly interested in racing.

“When I was younger and I got beat on one I should have won on, I’d be in bad form for two days. You’d actually think you had to be in bad form. It still hurts now, which is good, but you do learn to handle it better.

“I suppose I am in a lucky position, in that I’m going to get another opportunity, it might be harder for someone who doesn’t have the opportunities. I see it in some of the younger amateurs coming through, how much it hurts them. I think ‘that’s good, you need that’, but as you get older you learn how to handle it better.”

For many National Hunt racing fans, we’re coming into the most exciting time of the season and the outlook for the whole campaign prisms through Closutton. Willie Mullins’ team hit bounding new heights last season, going by the €7 million prize money mark for the first time in Ireland.

State Man, Galopin Des Champs, Energumene, El Fabiolo, Gaelic Warrior, Facile Vega, Lossiemouth, Impaire Et Passe are just some of the big names being readied and they will be joined by the latest generation of bumper horses, juvenile and novice hurdlers.

The task of taking on Willie has become ever more daunting.

“It could be as good a crop as we’ve ever had,” Mullins says. “The yard appears to be getting stronger every year. It’s a very exciting team and we’re very privileged to have it. You have the Gold Cup winner, the Champion Chase winner. You can’t ask for more.

“We’re as competitive as ever, you want to be champion. I always think with Willie, what sets him apart is when the Gigginstown split came, he was in his early 60s and had been champion trainer multiple times, he could have sat back and consolidated but he didn’t, he drove forward and we got more horses, more owners, more winners and came out of it stronger. That’s huge ambition, huge competitiveness.

“Willie never takes anything for granted. I’ve often thought about the season we came close to winning the British trainers’ championship and wondered should we be trying to give that a go again? But Willie’s view has always been that you cannot take your eye off the ball at home. You win in Ireland first and if it’s on in Britain at the end of the season, then maybe you give it a go.”

You can’t begrudge a Willie Mullins or a Gordon Elliott for what they have accomplished. It’s free market 1.01: the owners and horses are available to everyone and it’s up to trainers to go get them. However, plenty have expressed concern about the variance in the competitiveness of the big races and wondered if that is good for the sport.

Mullins, very honestly and tellingly, added his voice to that concern prior to the Thyestes Chase in January. Writing in the Racing Post prior to the iconic three-mile chase in which 13 of the 18 runners were representing Willie Mullins, Gordon Elliott and Henry de Bromhead, he said: “I don’t see that as satisfactory in a big prestigious handicap and it has got to a stage now where I think some action is needed from above. Of the last 10 winners, only three have come from outside the top three trainers. This isn’t a cycle.”

Asked to pick up on that point at a more macro level now, he said: “I do think there is a concentration of power in Irish racing at the moment and I don’t think that’s all good. I can see the bigger picture.

“I don’t see why a limit of four or five horses for one trainer or one owner would be a problem in races like the Thyestes. Yes, that might upset some people but there are lots of options. If you didn’t run in the Thyestes, you could run in the Paddy Power, Classic Chase, SkyBet Chase or Leopardstown Chase. The rules don’t always have to protect the strong.

“Trainers just below the top tier might need a little help. I see Gordon had 362 individual runners last year, we had 292 which means you definitely had more than that through your yard. Is that good? Is it completely necessary? Maybe not. Where is the line between ambition and greed? Everyone has their own view on that.

“People say you shouldn’t be punished for being good, but I think that’s looking at it the wrong way, I think you need to make the field as fair as possible for everyone. Manchester City can’t buy all the strikers in the world because they can only play two or three of them. I think most people can see the sport has changed a lot in recent years and it’s not a cycle.

“There is always a balance to strike. There will always be superpowers but there does need to be fairness.”

Concussion

While Mullins’ start to the new season has been excellent, he missed a few days at the very start of the campaign and revealed that was due to a concussion he sustained after getting unseated on Billaway in the Champion Hunter Chase at Punchestown.

In a compelling piece, he wrote about his experience back in the weigh room, going out for a ride in the bumper later on the card and not remembering it afterwards. It was a brilliantly written account, harrowing in some parts, but notably lauded by IHRB Senior Medical Officer Dr Jennifer Pugh who affirmed that it’s vital for jockeys to look out for each other when it comes to head injuries.

Asked what his motivation for the piece was, Mullins explains: “I guess as jockeys, you hear stories of lads riding with broken bones and that’s okay to an extent. I suppose concussion is a brain injury and that’s different.

“Maybe I was writing the piece to raise awareness that people shouldn’t be afraid to call it out, that it wouldn’t be snitching as such to tell the doctor that Johnny isn’t right and maybe he shouldn’t be riding.

“At Punchestown, bar you had a good conversation with me, you wouldn’t have picked up on it. It’s not like I was walking around and everyone could see he’s not right. So I wrote the piece just to detail my own experience, but it was as much because I enjoyed telling the story and thought it read well.

“I suppose you read about concussion in other sports. David Walsh is writing about it in rugby, we probably should be following their lead a bit. The rugby fellas would have ignored concussions down the years as well, and maybe we do a bit as well and we probably shouldn’t.”

Writing

He enjoys writing immensely and cites reading American sports writers from the 50s and 60s as the installation of that interest. That is one escape and breeding is another as he continues to develop that interest with a “handful of mares”. Notably, he has a few more siblings to Fun Fun Fun coming along, the mare he bred and rode to Grade 2 success at the Dublin Racing Festival in February.

“It’s a slow process, but very exciting,” he says. “Myself and Danny bred a winner recently at Downpatrick. I really enjoy that. I’m not very scientific about picking out stallions. Someone once told me that 5% of stallions are very good and 5% of stallions are very bad and the rest of them are mostly the same. I’d be of the opinion of having yourself a good broodmare and a good trainer and that does the job.

“We’ve obviously sent some of our mares to France to use their sires and obviously we’d use Burgage Stud just down the road and have had a lot of luck with Shantou and Jukebox Jury. We tend to stay quite local when we can.”

Back on the track, there is much to look forward to, notably tomorrow with another trip to Pardubice, Czech Republic, to ride in the Velka Pardubicka on last year’s winner Mr Spex.

“There’s a Slovakian girl in the yard and she had heard an interview with the owner of the horse and they said they were looking for a jockey, he happened to see on the internet that I’d had my 800th winner and that’s what put me in his head so it was good timing and hopefully it’s for luck,” he explains.

“It’s a great honour. He was third two years ago and he won last year, he’s only had one run this year and it was disappointing so maybe his prep hasn’t been perfect but I can’t wait.

“I’d recommend anyone to go out - it’s proper old school jumping and the track is kept like a garden. It’s a very special occasion.”

And what for Vauban in the Melbourne Cup?

“I’ll be going down. Of all the years, you’d have to go. He seems to tick all the boxes and he’s a younger horse than we’ve sent down there before so that’s probably an advantage. Without a doubt it would be one of our biggest wins.”

On his own personal list, new goals have been promoted to the top.

“The Kim Muir, a winner at Auteuil, a win against the pros at Cheltenham and the Foxhunter,” he rhymes off.

The borrowed time he’s been on has gone on much longer than expected, but the mentality to make the most of it has never changed.