Willie Mullins eyes repeat win with Nick Rockett

The Willie Mullins battalions have swept all before them in the UK in recent years. They came, they saw, they conquered.

Even sleepy old Plumpton, tucked away in a quiet corner of East Sussex, wasn’t safe. Not when Absurde came calling in April. But the walls of the Randox Grand National held firm for longer than most. After all it was 19 years between Hedgehunter providing the trainer with a first win in the great race and I Am Maximus the second.

But if the latter’s 2024 success breached the barricades, Nick Rockett’s victory 12 months later sent them crumbling to the floor.

He was followed home by the previous year’s winner, with stablemates Grangeclare West and Meetingofthewaters third and fifth. The white flag finally flew over the sport’s most famous race.

It was one of the most memorable stories in the rich history of the Grand National. The father-and-son dynamic with Patrick in the saddle, the raw emotion both showed in the immediate aftermath and then the heartbreaking backstory of Sadie Andrew, the late wife of the horse’s owner, Stewart. She knew Willie from their schooldays but passed away following a fight with cancer just after Nick Rockett’s first run.

And on Wednesday morning, on a drizzly, cool day in County Carlow, the road back to Aintree was starting to take shape.

Parading in front of the media are the principals from 2025 alongside Spanish Harlem, Mullins’ latest big-race winner.

He landed the Kerry National last month and is owned by Dr Peter Fitzgerald, who also owns Randox. You know his direction of travel, but what about Nick Rockett?

“We haven’t decided if we’re going to do the National or not,” the trainer says. “But possibly the more I think about it, and we’ve all been thinking about it for the last few weeks, because the question keeps cropping up, the more I think it’s probably a good idea to go back to Aintree with a horse who showed he handles the track so well.

“I don’t think he’ll have much more weight this time. I Am Maximus went back this year and had every chance over the last few fences, so we know it can be done.

“His owner Stewart has been discussing Gold Cup entries with me. He was asking should we be going for Cheltenham? So that’s a little thing in his head but when I look at the Gold Cup horses that are around, I think might he have as good a chance in the National.

“And to go back and do it again, that would be something.”

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Nick Rockett has the number one saddle cloth this morning, in two is I Am Maximus. You feel he’s a little hard done. Two Nationals, one wide-margin win and a narrow defeat under top weight on that unforgettable sunny April afternoon.

He’s alert, taking it all in, and will be Liverpool-bound again this spring if all goes well.

“I’d imagine he will. JP loves the National and having horses in it and JP has a couple of Gold Cup horses already. I’d imagine I Am Maximus will be back at Aintree,” Willie says.

And as numbers one and two circle in front, you can’t help but notice the similarities, not physically, but in terms of their profiles heading into the last two renewals.

“You do want that quality nowadays,” Mullins says. “It’s nice to have one on the up with it too. I’m hoping Spanish Harlem this year might be the horse. He just seems to have come right for me. He’s been here two years and it’s the first time I’ve been happy with him.

“He won the Kerry National, and hopefully I have two or three more horses like last year to go there with and plan campaigns for.”

In saddlecloth three is Grangeclare West, also heading back for another go at the great race.

“I think he could go back, all those horses, once they’ve been around there once or twice and have shown an aptitude for it, you think right, let’s go back,” his trainer confirms.

“The weights are much tighter nowadays and it’s a different type of race. We’d see ourselves going back there with him.”

And with Mullins there’s always a sense of history, not only past achievements but what might be next on the radar.

Nick Rockett is posing for photos now, and the trainer asks: “Has any horse ever won the Gold Cup after winning a Grand National?” The heads shake. “That could be a unique achievement and Nick Rockett and I Am Maximus are two horses with that quality I think to be Gold Cup contenders. Whether they’re good enough to win it, I don’t know.”

And they’d have to be campaigned differently if they were to take the road to Cheltenham next autumn.

“With the Gold Cup horses you can run in all those big races. Last year Galopin Des Champs won three of his five races, he’s earning good money all the time. But Grand National horses are different. You more or less have to mind them for the whole season.

“A few years ago we had a horse who was favourite at Aintree, and he fell at the first – Micko’s Dream. I’ve never been as disappointed in my life. A year’s work and it’s all over like that in a flash.”

For Mullins, the challenge of a new season never gets less exciting – or daunting.

“They’re different horses for different owners. As my wife and I remind ourselves when we have a winner of a small race at Tramore, that’s that owner’s Grand National, that owner’s Gold Cup. Because he’s probably bred the mare, bred the dam and he feels like I did after the Grand National last year in that moment. You have to appreciate that and make it their day.

“That to me is the fun of racing and the new challenge. It’s never the same thing year after year.

“I’m looking at all the horses out here this morning and I don’t know half their names yet. But I’m looking at all the new horses thinking ‘he could be a Champion Hurdle horse, he could be Cheltenham bumper winner, he could be a Ballymore horse’.

“I’m trying to put them in boxes for myself and in about two weeks’ time when the rain arrives, we’ll start to gallop them and I’ll be standing there, next to that tree, watching them and some expectations will go up, and some will go down. I’ll be thinking ‘geez, I got that one wrong’.

“Mick O’Toole used to say training horses is easy, just stand at the top of the gallop and send them up every day for six weeks. After those six weeks one or two of them will be coming up faster and they’re the racehorses.

“But then you get the odd horse who doesn’t perform at home on the gallops, they just don’t like the surface. But when you get them out on grass, and we always run them before we say they’re no good, you can get a pleasant surprise.

“It’s a real buzz when you’re able to call an owner and say that new fella is starting to shine and might be good enough to go to a bumper, onto Leopardstown and Cheltenham.

“But then there’s the other thing when the vet will ring you and say the horse you brought over this morning has a tendon, a splint, a fracture, and you have to ring the owner and say the dream is over for this year.”

For Mullins, the good days in recent years significantly outweigh the bad ones. And more magic moments might be just around the corner as he prepares to fly out to Australia to put the final touches to Absurde’s preparation for Saturday’s Caulfield Cup.

You don’t know which record will tumble next. The bar will somehow go higher – but where?

Then you put it to him that it’s 70 years since a trainer won three successive Grand Nationals. That man was Vincent O’Brien.

“Wow,” he says, puffing his cheeks out. “I’d never thought about that until now. Yes, that would be something very special. We’ll just have to get them there first.”

And with that last year’s one-two-three return to their stables, their trainer to do a round of TV interviews before picking up his passport and finding a route to sidestep a road closure on the way to the airport.

Australia is calling. And so is Aintree, with three horses who fought out the finish to last year’s race.

In terms of raw emotion, he’ll never surpass the moment Nick Rockett crossed the line in 2025. But matching another of the feats of the greatest trainer of a previous generation? Now that’s another potentially significant chapter in the ever-evolving story of the Randox Grand National.

Willie Mullins eyes repeat win with Nick Rockett

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