GORDON Elliott’s rampant run to begin the 2025/’26 Irish National Hunt campaign was already the storyline of the season heading into the festive period, and a dominant Christmas showing again took centre stage among the headlines this past week.

It takes quite a lot for a racing story to make the front page of a national newspaper (typically a controversy!), so seeing Elliott’s St Stephen’s Day six-timer as the sole news piece on the front of the Irish Daily Star on December 27th was a fair representation of the type of splash he was making. More of the same going forward would be excellent for the sport.

Come the end of the four days, the Cullentra winner count stood at a whopping 18 - including 14 successes at Leopardstown alone. Elliott had runners in 27 races at the Dublin track and won a stunning 45% of the entire Christmas programme there. That strike rate would have been even better had El Cairos not departed in spectacular fashion when set to collect on the 26th. He remains an outstanding prospect, and looks well-bought at £410,000 out of the David Maxwell Dispersal Sale, considering that similar sums are often paid for once-raced point-to-pointers.

The Elliott bandwagon rolled on to an across-the-card four-timer on New Year’s Day.

Relaying all surfaces on gallops at his yard this summer, combined with an approach where he was “taking our time a little bit more” with horses early in the season, may well have had a positive impact on this Christmas surge. It felt as though a number of Willie Mullins’ troops were operating below concert pitch too, albeit the champion trainer still emerged from the four days with a tidy 11 winners.

After an Elliott five-timer at the Galway Festival, a treble at the Listowel Harvest Festival, seven winners at the Down Royal Festival of Racing, five at the Punchestown Premiere Weekend, a four-fold multiple on Hilly Way Chase day and six-timers at both the Navan Racing Festival and Fairyhouse Winter Festival, the 47-year-old is now in an unprecedented position at this time of year in terms of the lead he holds in the National Hunt Trainers’ Championship.

The big question emerging from the Christmas period is a simple one: can Elliott keep this momentum up to launch a serious title challenge against his old adversary Mullins?

Now, the current leader has already poured cold water over any talk of a first championship triumph (“we have absolutely no chance of beating Willie Mullins”), but punters didn’t agree immediately after Paddy Power launched a betting market after the Christmas action. Mullins was installed as 1/8 favourite from Elliott at 5/1, but support for the challenger saw those odds fluctuate to 1/5 and 100/30 respectively.

Previous leads

How does Elliott’s current lead compare to previous seasons when the title came down to the wire?

Well, back in the 2016/’17 season (when Mullins edged out Elliott by just €199,495 at Punchestown), Elliott led by €226,325 as of the first week that January. A season later (when Mullins’ final margin of victory was €809,524), the Elliott Christmas lead was €557,938 in the same January window.

Right now, after all the festive and New Year’s Day action, Elliott’s lead stands at a much bigger €900,185.

Long story short, we are dealing with a far more substantial prize money advantage for Elliott right now than ever before in January. It is also a massive jump from the last two seasons, when Elliott led by €118,615 and €325,190 around this time of the campaign.

Whatever about those markers up to this point of the season, how about the months to come? There are probably three key battlegrounds that will go a long way to deciding whether Elliott can deny Mullins his 20th title this year.

Firstly, there is a huge €2.15 million up for grabs at the Dublin Racing Festival, the BoyleSports Irish Grand National has a standout €500,000 on offer at Fairyhouse and then – arguably most crucially – the Punchestown Festival is worth just over €3.43 million.

Elliott has already been busy bucking trends to begin this campaign against Mullins, and recent history suggests he will need to do similar into the coming months.

Starting with the Dublin Racing Festival, it felt as though Elliott wasn’t overly pushed about sending his best horses to the meeting 12 months ago and the results ended up reflecting that. He went 0-25 at last year’s DRF.

Mullins, who instead tends to circle this weekend as a greatly important target, rattled off seven winners (including six Grade 1s) from 53 runners.

As for the prize money head-to-head, Elliott emerged from the 2025 DRF with €160,500; Mullins bagged €1,008,250. The current leader has already been making noises about fielding a stronger team at the meeting this year, so watch this space because he will obviously need to.

Spring comparisons

The Irish National has been an interesting affair to follow for Elliott, because you would imagine that the type of staying chaser he tends to train would result in a strong representation in this valuable handicap. General Principle (2018) remains his only winner of the race, however, albeit in the six renewals since, Cullentra have been responsible for three seconds and a third. Mullins has won two of those last six runnings.

Elliott has a considerably better record in handicap chases at the Cheltenham Festival than Mullins, who has yet to win any race of that kind at the meeting. Whether the Co Meath team might be tempted to keep one of their best-handicapped chasers back for Fairyhouse this year, instead of targeting the Cotswolds, could be an interesting note to watch in 2026.

Punchestown is the most valuable week left in the campaign, though, and this is where it will be key that Elliott outperforms last year’s return to have any chance of a breakthrough championship.

The Co Kildare track has typically been Mullins’ playground down the years. He set a record of 19 winners for the meeting in 2021 and had a further 17 in 2023. From a team of 74 runners at the 2025 Punchestown Festival, Mullins visited the winner’s enclosure 15 times.

Elliott ran a noticeably smaller squad of 38 last year and it turned out that Teahupoo and Casheldale Lad were his only winners. In prize money terms, Mullins scooped €1,504,925 from Punchestown; Elliott won €275,625.

All told, between the 2025 Dublin Racing Festival and Punchestown Festival combined, Mullins won €2,513,175 versus Elliott on €436,125. Even with a lead of more than €900,000 as it stands, those two meetings alone tell you the sort of challenge that lies in store to keep his head in front.

In the last two campaigns, Mullins has got the verdict by €2.06 million and €2.26 million over Elliott, and he outscored him by €2.38 million both times from early January to season’s end.

Mullins levels

What also makes life tough for Elliott when looking at year-on-year comparisons is that Mullins diverted extra resources to Britain towards the end of last season to secure the trainers’ title there, so that campaign’s return was actually down on the previous two seasons’ levels.

For example, Mullins won approximately €7.3 million and €7 million in Irish prize money in the two campaigns before earning a reduced €5.97 million last year. His total of Irish winners for 2024/’25 was also down at 203 (from 237 and 257).

Eliott has made no secret that his team has been in a rebuilding mode in recent seasons, and 15 of his 18 Christmas winners were either technically novices over hurdles or fences, or bumper horses. That bodes very well for the future, but it also is a sign that his senior ranks may also be on the light side for the moment. One would imagine that two of his top senior performers, Teahupoo and Wodhooh, are likely to go straight to Cheltenham and won’t be earning prize money at the DRF too.

These are exciting times for his team, though, and his current advantage tells us that we are back closer to a title battle than has been the case for a number of years. Elliott never laid down after some serious setbacks in recent seasons, and the fruits of that determination are being seen now.

His red-hot form over a number of months, and odds of 100/30, tell you that he is probably doing himself a disservice by saying he has “no chance” of repelling Mullins in the table. The task still remains a massive one, though.

For starters, he must ensure a stronger showing at the DRF to sustain this exciting challenge into the deeper spring. Here’s hoping we’re in for a battle.