BY THE time he was in his very early 20s, Tom Mullins was backing himself when it came to talent spotting. He had been exposed to quality horses his entire life and stood by the side of his legendary late father Paddy, learning from the original master of Doninga.

So one day, throwing his eye at the sales over the usual cast of neophytes being promoted by connections as nascent stars, he resolved on a chesnut son of Redundant. While confident in his own judgement, he was still shy. So he gave Paddy Osborne £500 to do the bidding and take the horse home.

It was an astute piece of business, even with that added sting his soon-to-be-shed shyness imposed. Redundant Pal won 13 races, with his purchaser doing the steering on four of those occasions.

“I’m doing it since then and am very confident at it,” said Mullins last Monday, sitting in the conservatory of his lovely home overlooking a picturesque landscape that put on a show in the autumnal sunshine. He was just back from his local track Gowran Park, where Bercasa finished fourth in a flat handicap.

The day before, Spider Web stormed home to bag the JT McNamara Munster National for J.P. McManus, while former charge Charbel – bred by his sister Sandra – regained the winning thread in Chepstow.

It was a 24-hour spell that neatly summed up his place in the training ranks.

As the successes of Asian Maze (four Grade 1s), Oscar Dan Dan (Hatton’s Grace Hurdle), Alderwood (Cheltenham Festival twice), Bob Lingo (Galway Plate) and plenty more have illustrated, when Mullins has the material, he will deliver.

Selling to pay the bills has always been a part of the operation but, in recent years, the global markets in the flat have nudged him in that direction, where his judgement can be translated into winners and profit.

CURRY FAVOUR

Look through his string now and wife Helen is his biggest owner. He has never been one to curry favour in search of owners with bottomless pockets, so it suits him in that manner too. But most of all, he enjoys going to the sales, picking up affordable stock, hoping to find a champion that will go all the way under his care but failing that, selling them at a profit.

The 54-year-old has saddled seven winners on the flat this year, which is a career-high. He has the same number over jumps, operating at a 14% strike rate and on target to better his tally of 10 for the previous campaign.

The 25 recorded in 2014-’15 is out of reach but he is maintaining the consistency showcased since taking out his licence in 2003 after years as Paddy’s assistant, and then taking over from his father in February 2005.

Asian Maze was the flagbearer in those early days, blitzing a high-class field in the Aintree Hurdle among a slew of top-tier triumphs. But the owners never came flocking.

He is thankful to McManus, who has always had around five horses with him, and a few other loyal supporters but if he were relying on outside patrons, he would have 15, rather than 35 horses to work with.

He smiles, thinking of some of the wonderful days.

“Alderwood both years was very nice. I was confident the first year (when he won the County Hurdle) but I was extremely confident in the Grand Annual. I was so confident I didn’t even get nervous. Joe Riordan asked me going down, ‘How do you think he will go?’ ‘The only reason he won’t win’ I said, ‘is that I’m too confident.’ I got a great kick out of him winning at Punchestown too (in the Grade 1 Champion Novice Hurdle).

“Asian Maze winning the Aintree Hurdle was very good too but there was no interview or anything after. They switched over straight away to Peter Kay or Johnny Vegas. You wouldn’t know I won the race. I got no press out of it, and I was only training a couple of years, I could have done with it.”

HIGH-CLASS HORSE

Mullins always held Spider Web in high esteem.

“We thought he was gonna be a high-class horse. He won two races in Ballinrobe and Tipperary – bad races, and the handicapper slapped it to him but I thought it didn’t matter – he was a Sun Alliance (Baring Bingham Novices’ Hurdle) horse. But no matter what, we couldn’t get him to spark the next year. He was 111-odd the whole year. So we had to run him over fences to get him to learn his trade.

“I’m hoping he’ll progress. I think there could be more in him. He’s very fresh and well after his win. He came home and ate up so that was a good sign, that it didn’t take much out of him.”

He was not expecting his phone to be hopping with the offer of more horses on the back of such a high-profile success though.

“The game is gone very sad for the likes of me. I’m there 14 years odd as a trainer and the honeymoon period is well over. I had a great winner yesterday and I’m very confident in my ability as a trainer. I train as well as anyone.

“But I’m not going to get a new horse out of it. No way. There’s nothing gonna happen. No. And that’s sort of sad. That a fella that can train, has trained a big winner again – I’m not gonna get a horse out of it. That’s the state of play but that’s not the whole state of play. Willie is my brother and if you’re going to have a horse with a Mullins I suppose you’re going to have them with Willie.”

Menorah is probably the best horse sold from his yard to date. He won 14 times for Philip Hobbs. Eight of those were graded contests, two of them Grade 1s.

It is much more difficult to sell jumps horses from the track though nowadays, with the point-to-point scene the new nursery. Mullins views this development in a negative light.

“A lot of the reason trainers outside the top six don’t have horses now is people want to invest because they see these quarter of a million, £300,000 point-to-pointers being sold. So what they’ll do, rather than put a horse into be trained to race, they’ll go down to Denis Murphy, the Doyles and the rest of the boys down there (in Wexford); ‘There’s 20 grand, put another 20 with that, we’ll buy a point-to-pointer and go that road.’

“The local lad used to buy into a proper racehorse and give that to the trainer rather than try to make money out of it. Unless the Turf Club stop or put some sort of a halt on this four-year-old point-to-pointing, trainers like myself will always be struggling.”

POSITIVE

One positive he does see is the introduction of the Connolly’s Red Mills series of auction races over hurdles, mirroring the Foran Equine equivalent that has already proved so successful in flat racing.

“All it takes is something like that because we all are stupid into the horses. If we think we can have a winner, we’ll go.

We’ll spend 20, and maybe lose it, but at the hope of winning a race. You have a chance and it might entice new owners. It was very important that somebody showed a bit of initiative like this. More of these could revitalise the game. There’s a good pot in the maiden hurdle, a couple of winners’ races and a final. If it caught on, there could be more.”

Because otherwise, he says, the industry is skewed.

“The people at the top – you’ve Jessica (Harrington) and Willie but they’re dealing with billionaires. Not millionaires, billionaires. Then you’ve the other four trainers being tanked up by Gigginstown. Billionaires again. If you wanna be up at that level you’ve got to have a billionaire that’s gonna put in 40 horses at an average 100 thousand a go. Then you’ll be up there.

“I’m not gonna go over to London to try and fish one of those lads out. Willie was lucky he got Rich Ricci.”

Of course Willie actively pursued wealthy clients to fill his yard with horses of genuine quality. They didn’t just land on his door.

“Rich Ricci kind of landed on his door. Joe Riordan, who’d be a good family friend for years, his brother Pat used to live in Bermuda and he was a good friend of this Rich Ricci. Pat Riordan said he knew us and he’d bring him over and introduce him to Tony at Punchestown. Rich Ricci had all this money but for some reason Tony said he couldn’t meet him that day – he had to be somewhere else. Then Pat Riordan introduced him to Willie and that’s how he got Rich Ricci.

“I don’t tout for owners. I do a bit of tweeting on Twitter there but I’m not going to be bowing down to anyone. I’m 54. I’m training 14 years and I was training virtually a long time before that and I’m not gonna take shit anymore from lads.

“I had that early doors, lads bullying me, telling me to do this, that or the other or the horse would leave the yard. Now I’d tell them to just come down and collect the horse. I wouldn’t handle the stupid lads now anymore.”

It is clear that Mullins does not approve of the Gigginstown influence, arguing that they contrast sharply with the loyalty McManus shows. He reels off a list of people that once trained major winners for Michael O’Leary but were jettisoned.

His own son David is an example, despite riding a slew of winners in the maroon livery, most famously as a 19-year-old in the 2016 Grand National on Rule The World.

“David is a brilliant jockey, I think, but there’s other very good jockeys there. If you’re not riding for Gigginstown or Willie, you’ll be sitting a lot. Yesterday he’d no ride, he went golfing with Bryan Cooper. It is amazing to be leaving the likes of him in the stand, but that’s how the game is gone.

“Gigginstown have a real stranglehold and it’s not positive for the jump game. It’s not enticing new owners and it’s pissing the existing ones off. And they don’t stick with trainers or jockeys – they have a negative effect on trainers and jockeys. They are giving shocking money for horses but it’s not going back into the racing game, it’s going into point-to-points and store horses.

“I’m shocked ‘Mouse’ Morris is just training point-to-point horses now – two years ago he’d two National winners for them. There’s no business with them boys the way they do it.”

So he is turning his attention to the flat, where there is something for everyone.

PLENTY OF BUSINESS

“Flat is booming now. There’s loads of business for everybody outside of Coolmore … There is plenty of money there and plenty of business. There’s heaps of flat trainers, having heaps of owners and heaps of runners compared to the jumps game. The whole thing here is very competitive, it’s the best in the world so people want horses that have shown some ability here.

“I have maybe 15 paying horses up in the yard and the rest of them are mine. It’s up to me to buy a decent horse and wait for him to run well. I was talking to a big National Hunt trainer the other day. He told me he bought nine yearlings for €100,000 in total.

I bought seven for around the same. I’d say I never bought as nice a horse and none of them were over €25,000. And this time next year, I’ll know exactly where I’m going. With the jumpers, I’d have to pay €50,000 for one. If you had to buy nine nice bumper horses? Half a mill, full stop!

“If I didn’t get into the yearlings three or four years ago I wouldn’t be earning a living. Three or four years ago I went up and bought yearlings. They’re profitable but I’d be hoping to get a real good horse out of it someday.”

Phoenix Thoroughbreds bought Mia Mento after she won her two-year-old maiden at Leopardstown in July and left her in his care. He is hopeful of them sending a few more yearlings too and has joked with Dermot Farrington about the Galileo fillies purchased for €3.2 million and €2 million being among them. “I get on very well with the boys, I’d be slagging them. I said, ‘When you have that €3.2 million filly broken, I don’t mind you sending her down.’ ‘I’ll pass the message on’ he said. We were laughing. They will send one or two on I’m sure and I’d love that.

“I’d love to break into the flat. The Mullins’ have won everything in the jumps; my father, myself, Tony and Willie. So I don’t mind – if a billionaire came in the morning and said ‘Here, there’s 50 flat ones’, I’d go flat out. Because it would be something new to me. It would excite me. Even at a small level, a make-a-living level, it would prick my ears to go down that route on the flat.”

Expect him to make it work.

Tom Mullins winning on eventual Gold Cup winner Dawn Run

Dawn Run

Mullins was a very capable rider and won on two Gold Cup winners, Bregawn and Dawn Run. He was unbeaten on ‘The Mare’. He recalls being 18 and desperate to win in Galway to impress a girl he was seeing at the time. There is a fond recollection too of success at Tralee.

“We knew she was a good one but you never think they’re going to win a Gold Cup or a Champion Hurdle. After Galway she went to Tralee. She ran away with me at the five-furlong pole and kept going, in very soft ground. It was some performance. She was some mare.

Learning from Paddy

“I wouldn’t have Top Othe Ra only for him. I often saw him nursing back a horse after it being broken down. And the horse might break down two or three times but he’d still work at it. You’d often be thinking ‘What’s he at?’ Next thing he’d get the horse back, bring him to Killarney or some place and he’d win.

“It’s a great thrill to bring back a horse. He’s been a right servant for us winning four times last year and twice more this year, including in Galway. He won me a lot of money. He broke down badly with his tendons after winning his bumper with David but they’re great now.”

Big Brother

“I suppose Willie wanted it more than me. Willie had a mindset and knew how to do it. He’s very clever and Willie has no peers in the game in my opinion. He knows how to win with an ordinary horse and how to keep an owner happy. He’s very clever with owners and staff.

“Twelve or fifteen years ago, like Gordon (Elliott) has now, he built up a group around him, went out with them, socialised with them and built owners that way. I’d never do that. I want to train my winners but if people want to talk to me I’ll talk to them. If they don’t, I won’t.”