Trends analyst Matt Tombs is back with his second article of 2026, which examines Willie Mullins’ season debutants and horses arriving at the Festival with one run.
All punters have plenty of “I nearly backed the winner” stories especially in big fields at the Festival – but sometimes it’s the races that I’ve got totally wrong which are more enlightening.
If just before the 2025 Festival began I’d hypothetically had to rank all the horses which turned out to have an SP of 17.0 in order of which were the most likely winners – I think Coral Cup winner Jimmy Du Seuil would have been at or near the bottom of my list.
I thought Jimmy De Seuil was a badly handicapped horse. He’d been 13l second to Ballyburn in the previous Baring Bingham but bar the top class novice winner it looked the weakest renewal of that race for a long time, (especially with the two British runners not firing).
He’d then run an ordinary race at Aintree and a poor one at Punchestown. 146 looked a stiff mark for his seasonal debut and Paul Townend had passed him over – but he won pretty easily so I was keen to look at why I’d got him so wrong.
My view on Jimmy De Seuil’s form failed to take into account how much he might have improved in the 313 days since his last run.
Of course many horses improve for gaining more racecourse experience – but they can also improve at home over time from schooling, working and natural maturity. If, like Jimmy Du Seuil, they haven’t made the racecourse so far that season punters are in the dark about how much, if at all, they’ve improved.
I started wondering whether my mistake was a common one. Are horses who arrive at the Festival on their seasonal debuts underestimated? I therefore researched their record.
An initial difficulty was defining “seasonal debut” – you could take an arbitrary date in the autumn as being typical of when the ‘winter horses’ begin running. On balance I decided to use the entire season, (defined as beginning the day after the Punchestown Festival ends.)
Whilst the theory is mainly about horses who have improved at home during a substantial break, I also looked separately at horses who had run only on the flat that season – and who might be improving as racehorses for that experience before turning their attention back to jumps racing.
At first sight the results don’t look that interesting. This century, horses that hadn’t run since the previous Punchestown Festival are 10/139, resulting in a small loss not far from a neutral return once over-rounds are factored in.
However, there is big disparity between Willie Mullins and everyone else. Willie is 7/24 – 34pt (141%) profit, other trainers are 3/115 – 43pt (37%) loss. More recently other trainers are 0/79 at the last 18 Festivals.
If you include horses that had run that season but only on the flat the disparity grows. Mullins is 8/31 – 128pt (412%) profit, other trainers are 3/120 – 48pt (40%) loss, (albeit the Mullins figures are distorted by Poniros’ win in the Triumph.)
Interestingly, of all Willie’s 24 seasonal debutants only Douvan was running in a chase, (he fell at the last ditch when leading in the Champion Chase.) In contrast chasers were 56% of other trainers seasonal debutants and provided all 3 of their winners.
Given his record with seasonal debutants I certainly wouldn’t be prejudiced against such Mullins chasers but he tends be more cautious about soundness with chasers. As he’s 0/54 in handicap chases at the Festival, I think the Mullins hurdlers is the area to focus on.
Four of the Mullins wins came from Quevega who was outclassing rivals in what, at that stage, was quite a weak race. The other three winners are more interesting. Penhill won the 2018 Stayers Hurdle – a reminder it can be done in a championship race, (as Martin Pipe had demonstrated 22 years earlier with Cyborgo).
Willie has only run five seasonal debutants in handicap hurdles but they have finished 01301, with Arctic Fire winning the 2017 County off 158, (the highest mark defied at the Festival all century.) If you add in runners that had only run on the flat that season the record becomes 0133041.
Whilst Jimmy Du Seuil had the more obvious profile as a second season hurdler who had obvious scope to have improved at home, it’s worth noting that the other 3 handicap winners on seasonal debut were more seasoned campaigners. Young Spartacus and Mullins’ Arctic Fire were in their fourth seasons over those obstacles and Royal Predica was in his fifth.
Arctic Fire had been dropped 8lb since his previous run. Royal Predica was 6lb lower than his three previous runs and Young Spartacus was 3lb lower than on his previous two runs. Often being off for a substantial period results in some help from the handicapper.
Given Willie’s ability to win hurdle races at the Festival with seasonal debutants, I’d be as interested in those with the Arctic Fire profile as the second season hurdlers like Jimmy Du Seuil – the former are more likely to go under the radar.
Willie’s two handicap hurdle runners that had run only on the flat that season are also informative. That’s because (unsurprisingly) it’s proved hard to peak a horse for a big autumn flat handicap and then again for the Festival in March.
The Cesarewitch is a good example. Since No Refuge won the 2005 Baring Bingham having been eighteenth at Newmarket, 53 runners from the Cesarewitch have run at the Festival and they’ve all been beaten. That includes 7 Cesarewitch winners who were all beaten at least 19l at Cheltenham.
Yet that Mullins pair ran really well at the Festival. Scaramanga was fourth in the Coral Cup at 51.0 after running in the Cesarewitch and then the Irish November Handicap. Absurde was third when going for a repeat win in the County Hurdle having last run in the Melbourne Cup in November.
Historically at the Festival I’ve been prejudiced against horses peaked for such big flat races in the autumn but I’ll make an exception with the Mullins horses, especially when they’ve been freshened up since.
As with all trends we need to look beyond the bare statistics – it’s not simply seasonal debutants. It could be argued that horses which managed to blow away the cobwebs with one run before the Festival might do even better than seasonal debutants, (where they didn’t have a hard race close to the Festival and so are less susceptible to the so-called ‘bounce’ factor.)
I think trying to draw arbitrary lines around dates for horses who have run once that season is too subjective and it is better to simply look at the winners this century off one run. I’ve stripped out the Bumper and the Hunter Chase as the ‘seasons’ in those two divisions have been a bit different.
On that basis, 35% of the 34 Festival winners this century off a single jumps race run that season have been trained by Willie Mullins. 3 were at the last two Festivals, (Kargese in the 2025 County and in 2024 Lossiemouth in the Mares Hurdle and Majborough in the Triumph,) so that trend may be building.
Triumph runner-up and Grade 1 winning juvenile Kargese was unsurprisingly well found in the market but some are less obvious. An example was Bleu Berry who won the 2018 Coral Cup. He’d been a promising novice the season before, winning a Grade 2. After a setback he made a belated reappearance at the inaugural Dublin Racing Festival, finishing seventeenth in the two-mile handicap hurdle, before winning the Coral Cup at 21.0 on his next start.
A bit like the Albert Bartlett with his novices I think Willie likes to throw a few darts at the Coral Cup, having prioritised the County and Martin Pipe first. Both his Coral Cup winners Jimmy De Seuil and Bleu Berry have struck at big prices off interrupted preparations.
As a general point Willie now tends to give his better juveniles a long break and not run them again until they are 5. In the County especially that could leave them well handicapped as Kargese was, in particular if they weren’t that fit for their single run during the season before the Festival. A word of caution this year is that the 2024/25 juveniles look a substandard crop and so the ones handicapped mainly on juvenile form may not be well treated.
I therefore think this is a good time to focus on Mullins horses that have not run yet this season, (or run minimally.) Some of the Grade 1 contenders like Mighty Park and Poniros off 1 jumps run, (the latter also having had 1 run on the flat,) are relatively high profile.
There may be more value amongst Willie’s entries in the handicap hurdles:
I’ll want to see the weights next week before betting on these handicap hurdles but these 5 will be on my radar when I do.
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