If competition really is a sin, as the world’s first billionaire JD Rockefeller supposedly remarked, then this week’s Punchestown Festival could emerge as an unlikely oasis of virtue with Willie Mullins mostly preaching to the defeated.
It is six weeks since the man who has transformed the parameters of success in National Hunt racing took another momentous jump forward at Cheltenham.
Legacies have been carved out of trainers having 10 career winners at the most important racing festival of all. Mullins saddled 10 in four days, a new and previously almost unimaginable tally for a single week.
Such dominance never just happens in the first place and is certainly not maintained by taking things for granted
Now the bulk of the team that produced such a remarkable run of success is being readied for the finale to another jumps season in Ireland, which takes place over five days starting tomorrow.
After last year’s behind closed doors festival, and cancellation in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the significance of up to 130,000 pourin …