It’s no secret that Willie Mullins has been dominant at the Cheltenham Festival for some time. Year after year, the master trainer leaves the four-day meeting with plenty of winners, and that’s likely to continue for a good few years to come.
He’s often associated with having top horses for the graded races, and with good reason. The reason being that he’s won an awful lot of the non-handicap races at the festival in recent times.
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Last season, the man who seemingly knows better than anyone else how to ready one for the festival scooped six graded races over the four days, which is not to be sneezed at.
Moreover, at the last five Cheltenham’s, no trainer has scooped more non-handicap prizes than Mullins, who during that time has a strike rate of 32%. Considering that Cheltenham is the pinnacle of the National Hunt game, with the races more competitive than they are at any other point in the season, that really is impressive.
The trouble is, you won’t get big prices, that’s for sure. Five of those six winners last season were sent off as favourites, with only one of those winners returning odds greater than 7/5.
There are of course no easy routes to betting on winners at the festival, and I’m certainly no genius for stating that Mullins is a trainer to focus on, but if digging deep and searching for value isn’t your thing, and you’re looking for a simple approach that requires little thought, then following Willie Mullins’ horses in the graded races probably won’t see you go far wrong, at least in terms of backing winners.