DURING the height of his dominance, the concept of ‘Tiger-proofing’ golf courses took place in order to essentially make them more difficult for Tiger Woods to overpower.

A number of fairways were made narrower, holes extended and bunkers placed strategically at Tiger’s typical driving distances. In essence, it tried to slow down greatness.

Though never officially linked to Willie Mullins’ dominance in National Hunt racing, in ways, it has felt as though some of the changes rolled out by the British Horseracing Authority in recent years have had a similar intention.

Case in point: the Mullins-trained State Man wins the County Hurdle as 11/4 favourite in March 2022. He was thoroughly unexposed, a novice having just his fourth start over hurdles, but he did satisfy the qualifying criteria for the race of three previous hurdling starts. It was the second time in three years that Mullins won the County with a horse making its fourth start over hurdles, following Saint Roi in 2020.

Six months after State Man’s success, the BHA’s Jump Pattern Committee announced novice and juvenile horses would be “required to run a minimum of four times (up from three) prior to competing in a Class 1 or Class 2 handicap hurdle race”. This was done, according to the BHA, to “give the handicappers more information on which to base their assessment, with the aim of boosting the fairness and competitiveness of our major handicaps”.

Even with an extra run required, unexposed horses continued to have attractive profiles in such handicaps, which is hardly a surprise.

In March 2024, Mullins came back to the County Hurdle and struck with Absurde - a novice having reached the minimum four runs over hurdles beforehand in order to qualify. When stablemate Galopin Des Champs won the 2021 Martin Pipe, he had just the four hurdles runs under his girth too.

What followed in September 2024? The Jockey Club announced eligibility for non-novice handicaps at The Festival was set to change again: “From 2025, [the number of required starts] will be increased to five hurdle runs”.

Hit where it hurts

It would be unfair to paint the authorities’ adjustments as purely Mullins-focused, though they did mention the spread of connections contesting handicaps as a factor at the time of their 2024 announcement. The Jockey Club said: “There are a number of benefits we expect to see from this change, including Festival handicaps becoming more competitive, more possible winners and connections more willing to compete as a result. It should also encourage high-quality, unexposed novices to run in graded races.”

Whatever way you slice it, these changes clearly had the potential to impact an obvious area of strength for the 113-time Cheltenham Festival-winning trainer and, under today’s rules, neither Saint Roi, State Man, Galopin Des Champs or Absurde would have been eligible to run in the handicap races they won at the meeting.

In a similar vein, Mullins would not have been allowed to run 100/1 shocker Poniros in the Triumph Hurdle last season if new rules rolled out last September were in place then. The BHA made a rating-requirement change on foot of Mullins capturing the day-four opener with a horse who had never previously raced over hurdles. That one particularly felt like a case of Tiger-proofing.

But back to the handicap rule tweaks made ahead of the 2025 Festival. The point of flagging this now is because there must be a real question over how many novices Mullins will have qualified to run in those races this year.

As Tony Keenan flagged in his column in The Irish Field post-Christmas, Mullins had a particularly quiet November and December in 2025 - his total of 32 winners being the worst he has managed since 2010. He has been lighter than usual on quality novice hurdlers too. In fact, Mullins doesn’t have one horse in either the Supreme, Turners or Albert Bartlett at a single-figure price.

Qualifying trouble

If he isn’t holding a raft of obvious favourites for the Grade 1s, could those novices filter into handicaps? Well, getting enough runs into them looks a tough task at present.

As of this week, Mullins has had 41 non-juvenile novice hurdlers run to a Racing Post Rating (RPR) of 115 or higher in Ireland this season. The overwhelming majority of those horses, 76% (31 of 41) have had three runs or less over hurdles - a long way short of the five required for a non-juvenile Cheltenham handicap by the cutoff point of February 23rd. Nearly three out of five (59%) have had just one or two hurdles runs in their career.

Long story short, we are six and a half weeks away from the start of the Cheltenham Festival, and only seven Mullins-trained novices in the 115+ RPR sample currently have enough runs to get into a handicap at the meeting.

These aren’t all ‘A-list’ material either. Four finished 10th or worse in Leopardstown Christmas Festival handicaps last time out (including Cameletta Vega, who is due to be sold as a broodmare prospect next month).

Another, Yoradreamer, has since gone chasing and been beaten wide margins, while Kilbeggan maiden hurdle winner Dysart Dasher was last seen being held off a mark of 117 at Galway in October.

The issue of getting novices into Cheltenham handicaps isn’t a Mullins-only issue, but it looks like he’ll need to think outside the box to strike in those races again this year, perhaps with unexposed non-novices who have missed time, or youngsters with multiple runs in France.

As he proved last year when landing the Coral Cup with Jimmy Du Seuil after a 313-day layoff, Mullins is capable of pulling some sensational rabbits out of the hat. And you can probably guess how many previous hurdles Jimmy Du Seuil had before Cheltenham too… The bare five that guaranteed him eligibility.