The Willie Mullins battalions have swept all before them in the UK in recent years. They came, they saw, they conquered.<\/p>\n
Even sleepy old Plumpton, tucked away in a quiet corner of East Sussex, wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
But if the latter\u2019s 2024 success breached the barricades, Nick Rockett\u2019s victory 12 months later sent them crumbling to the floor.<\/p>\n
He was followed home by the previous year\u2019s winner, with stablemates Grangeclare West and Meetingofthewaters third and fifth. The white flag finally flew over the sport\u2019s most famous race.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s owner, Stewart. She knew Willie from their schooldays but passed away following a fight with cancer just after Nick Rockett\u2019s first run.<\/p>\n
And on Wednesday morning, on a drizzly, cool day in County Carlow, the road back to Aintree was starting to take shape.<\/p>\n
Parading in front of the media are the principals from 2025 alongside Spanish Harlem, Mullins\u2019 latest big-race winner.<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t decided if we\u2019re going to do the National or not,\u201d the trainer says. \u201cBut possibly the more I think about it, and we\u2019ve all been thinking about it for the last few weeks, because the question keeps cropping up, the more I think it\u2019s probably a good idea to go back to Aintree with a horse who showed he handles the track so well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think he\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis owner Stewart has been discussing Gold Cup entries with me. He was asking should we be going for Cheltenham? So that\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd to go back and do it again, that would be something.\u201d<\/p>\n
WATCH: Re-live the Aintree drama in full with our FREE video replay<\/p>\n
Nick Rockett has the number one saddle cloth this morning, in two is I Am Maximus. You feel he\u2019s a little hard done. Two Nationals, one wide-margin win and a narrow defeat under top weight on that unforgettable sunny April afternoon.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s alert, taking it all in, and will be Liverpool-bound again this spring if all goes well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d imagine he will. JP loves the National and having horses in it and JP has a couple of Gold Cup horses already. I\u2019d imagine I Am Maximus will be back at Aintree,\u201d Willie says.<\/p>\n
And as numbers one and two circle in front, you can\u2019t help but notice the similarities, not physically, but in terms of their profiles heading into the last two renewals.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou do want that quality nowadays,\u201d Mullins says. \u201cIt\u2019s nice to have one on the up with it too. I\u2019m hoping Spanish Harlem this year might be the horse. He just seems to have come right for me. He\u2019s been here two years and it\u2019s the first time I\u2019ve been happy with him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe won the Kerry National, and hopefully I have two or three more horses like last year to go there with and plan campaigns for.”<\/p>\n
In saddlecloth three is Grangeclare West, also heading back for another go at the great race.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he could go back, all those horses, once they\u2019ve been around there once or twice and have shown an aptitude for it, you think right, let\u2019s go back,\u201d his trainer confirms.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe weights are much tighter nowadays and it\u2019s a different type of race. We\u2019d see ourselves going back there with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
And with Mullins there\u2019s always a sense of history, not only past achievements but what might be next on the radar.<\/p>\n
Nick Rockett is posing for photos now, and the trainer asks: \u201cHas any horse ever won the Gold Cup after winning a Grand National?\u201d The heads shake. \u201cThat 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\u2019re good enough to win it, I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
And they\u2019d have to be campaigned differently if they were to take the road to Cheltenham next autumn.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the Gold Cup horses you can run in all those big races. Last year Galopin Des Champs won three of his five races, he\u2019s earning good money all the time. But Grand National horses are different. You more or less have to mind them for the whole season.<\/p>\n
\u201cA few years ago we had a horse who was favourite at Aintree, and he fell at the first – Micko\u2019s Dream. I\u2019ve never been as disappointed in my life. A year\u2019s work and it\u2019s all over like that in a flash.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Mullins, the challenge of a new season never gets less exciting \u2013 or daunting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re different horses for different owners. As my wife and I remind ourselves when we have a winner of a small race at Tramore, that\u2019s that owner\u2019s Grand National, that owner\u2019s Gold Cup. Because he\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat to me is the fun of racing and the new challenge. It\u2019s never the same thing year after year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m looking at all the horses out here this morning and I don\u2019t know half their names yet. But I\u2019m looking at all the new horses thinking \u2018he could be a Champion Hurdle horse, he could be Cheltenham bumper winner, he could be a Ballymore horse\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m trying to put them in boxes for myself and in about two weeks\u2019 time when the rain arrives, we\u2019ll start to gallop them and I\u2019ll be standing there, next to that tree, watching them and some expectations will go up, and some will go down. I\u2019ll be thinking \u2018geez, I got that one wrong\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cMick O\u2019Toole 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\u2019re the racehorses.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then you get the odd horse who doesn\u2019t perform at home on the gallops, they just don\u2019t like the surface. But when you get them out on grass, and we always run them before we say they\u2019re no good, you can get a pleasant surprise.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a real buzz when you\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then there\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/a>\u2019s preparation for Saturday\u2019s Caulfield Cup.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t know which record will tumble next. The bar will somehow go higher \u2013 but where?<\/p>\n Then you put it to him that it\u2019s 70 years since a trainer won three successive Grand Nationals. That man was Vincent O\u2019Brien.<\/p>\n \u201cWow,\u201d he says, puffing his cheeks out. \u201cI\u2019d never thought about that until now. Yes, that would be something very special. We\u2019ll just have to get them there first.”<\/p>\n And with that last year\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Australia is calling. And so is Aintree, with three horses who fought out the finish to last year\u2019s race.<\/p>\n In terms of raw emotion, he\u2019ll 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\u2019s another potentially significant chapter in the ever-evolving story of the Randox Grand National.<\/p>\n More from Sporting LifeSafer gambling<\/p>\n We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.<\/p>\n If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline \/ GamCare<\/a> on 0808 8020 133.<\/p>\n Further support and information can be found at begambleaware.org<\/a> and gamblingtherapy.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Willie Mullins battalions have swept all before them in the UK in recent years. They came, they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-202798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}