Dublin Racing Festival Special: Grand National-winning jockey David Mullins talks to Hot Press

I can’t help thinking of the A Song For Europe episode of Father Ted as David Mullins poses with one of his lovely horses, Scoir Méar, at his dad Tom’s Duninga Stables in Goresbridge, County Kilkenny.

HP snapper Conor Heavey removing his lens cap is the cue for the handsome eight-year-old grey to start striking serious equine pose.

“He didn’t learn posing for the cameras in the winner’s enclosure, that’s for sure,” David notes ruefully. “I gave him a really bad ride last year at Cheltenham and came in fifth. J.P. still hasn’t forgiven me!”

The initialled one in question being J.P. McManus, the Limerick businessman who bought Scoir Méar – it translates as ‘a quick exit’ - from David after he’d paid £2,000 for him at auction.

“Not quick enough,” David says with another shake of the head, “but he’s a fantastic horse, though.”

Students of the turf will be aware that the youngest member of the celebrated Mullins racing dynasty made history in 2016 when he became the youngest-ever Irish winner of the Aintree Grand National on the Mouse Morris-trained, Michael O’Leary-owned 33/1 shot, Rule The World. Can David, now an old man of 21, talk us through the day?

“It was very special but I won’t tell the full story until I retire!” he smiles mischievously. “The day started with me having to lose a bit of weight because Ruby Walsh had broken his wrist and I got one of his spare rides. There’s nothing like sweating two or three pounds out in the sauna to take your mind off the fact that you’re riding in your first Grand National at 5.15!”

Which is in direct contravention of the Lucozade ads that tell you to “hydrate, hydrate, hydrate!”

“But when you’re doing what you love it’s adrenaline, adrenaline, adrenaline! You wouldn’t want to be dehydrating yourself like that every day, but it’s part and parcel of being a jockey.”

Making his Aintree win even more of a fairytale was his swapping of horses with Bryan Cooper just 36 hours before the tape went up.

“We actually swapped over twice,” David reveals. “Originally, I was riding Rule The World and Bryan was riding First Lieutenant. Two days before Aintree it was Bryan riding Rule The World and me riding First Lieutenant. Then, on the morning of the declarations, he changed again.”

I imagine Bryan must have felt as sick as a pandemonium of parrots – yep, that’s the collective noun – when First Lieutenant fell at the second, and he had to look on as his original mount scooped the £561,300 prize money.

“No, he was delighted and was the first person to come over and shake my hand. Bryan’s a good loser as well as a great winner and took it very well. While he was walking back to the enclosure, I’d made it onto the second circuit and was thinking, ‘Wow, how the fuck am I after getting here?’ There were a few of us in a bunch up the front, all of whom would have been fancying their chances at that stage I imagine. I really wanted to win it for Mouse Morris, a great old-fashioned trainer and lovely man, whose son, Christopher, had died the previous year in Argentina from carbon monoxide poisoning.”

If I’d just won the National I’d be baggsying the celebratory jéroboam of champagne and going on a serious 5 Star bender, but David was almost straight back in the saddle.

“Yeah, I had another race 40 or 45 minutes later. I sat down, took a few deep breaths, tied my helmet as I always do, and got straight back in to it again. You’re dealing with a half-ton animal, so you can’t afford not to be focused.”

How scary is it coming up to Becher’s Brook for the first time?

“Not as scary as it was because, like at Leopardstown, they’ve changed the inside of the fences from plastic to wooden stakes to cut down on injuries. A horse would rather hit them now and un-seat you rather than turn them over and fall. The Chair is pretty frightening, though. You have to try and ride it like a normal fence, but it’s very wide and if you meet it too long you mightn’t get there.”

What’s Michael O’Leary like when he’s not being the aviational equivalent of Donald Trump?

“I get on great with him and his brother, Eddie, who manages the racing side of things for him. It’s hard to pierce holes in the operation they’ve got at the minute. I think they were 1st, 2nd and 3rd in The Lexus at Leopardstown, which is unheard of. They’re hard to beat and you’re better off with them sometimes.”

David was literally brought back down to earth with a bump a few weeks after the National.

“I was riding at Ballinrobe and we landed on the jump,” he winces. “It was getting to summer so the ground was hard and I knew straight away that my collar-bone was broken. I managed to drive my car about half-away home from Ballinrobe but then the pain got too much. That night in bed I could hear a clicking noise in my chest, which I discovered at the x-ray was a punctured lung. I broke my collar-bone again in October but, touch wood, I’ve been very, very lucky.”

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Two broken collar-bones in quick succession is lucky?

“Yeah, 100%. Jack Kennedy, who’s been riding fantastically since he started in the last two years, broke his leg three times in 2017. Robbie McNamara, who I grew up watching – he was a genius in the bumpers – was left paralysed from the waist down following a serious fall at Wexford. He’s training horses now and is in good spirits, which is great.”

Is it possible to get on a horse that will soon be galloping towards fences at 40mph and not feel just a bit frightened?

“You’d be absolutely terrified some days sitting in the weigh-room,” he admits. “You don’t know if you’ve tucked your colours in right, you don’t know how the race is going to pan out, you don’t know what’s going to happen. But as soon as the tape is dropped and you’re off, all your worries go away. You don’t think about it, it’s just normal.”

Asked whether there’s the same trying to psych out opponents in racing as there is in athletics, boxing and MMA, David shakes his head and says, “No, unlike Formula 1 where it’s once a month, we’re spending three or four days a week together. We share lifts and go on holidays together. You can’t just not talk to someone because there’s a race. Part of what makes the sport great is the banter.”

At one of the meets David rode in last year in Galway, three out of the eight jockeys drug tested were found to have cocaine in their system. The idea being that coke acts as an appetite suppressant to help keep your weight down. How widespread is the problem?

“There are some lads that go down that route, which is stupid because you’re going to get caught and be given a lengthy ban, but they’d be in the minority. It’s good that it’s out in the open now and being talked about.”

Racing is not only the Sport of Kings, but of Rock ‘n’ Roll, TV Celebrities and Retired Footballers Looking For New Challenges.

“I rode a Grade One winner on Augusta Kate for a syndicate that includes Ant and Dec, Alan Shearer, the golfer Lee Westwood and Graham Wiley, the Sage computer guy, and his wife Andrea,” he recalls. “I haven’t met him but I’ve seen Ronnie Wood parading with Sandymount Duke who he’s had a good run of luck with. Ronan O’Gara’s a big supporter of the game. He knows everyone and would be in touch with Ruby Walsh. He had a winner last night at Kempton Park with Bachelor. I was sitting across the weigh room with Michael Owen in November when he made his jockeying debut at a charity race at Ascot. He was looking nervous, but came second, which was pretty good for somebody who’d only got into the saddle for the first time five months prior to that. I think I read somewhere that he lost 20 pounds in 21 days to make the weight. Prince Charles and were Camilla there, so it was a bit of an occasion.”

Was David good at other sports?

“I’m from Kilkenny, so you’re better off bringing your hurl to school than a school-bag. I played club hurling until I was 16 and realised I was supposed to be getting smaller, not bigger.”

Robbie Henshaw was on a two puddings and chips with everything diet for a while in order to put on the 15kg that the Connacht staff said he needed to.

“God, 15kg is a lot. If I could lose just five it would be great. Think I’d have to cut one of my legs off to do it!”

Coming from such a well-known racing family - Tom Mullins currently trains 50 horses while his brother Willie is up around the 250 mark - would David have been told to cop on to himself and stop being stupid if he’d announced at 15 that he wanted to be an accountant?

“They wouldn’t have minded at all because they know how tough this game can be - even if you are born into it. I wasn’t the best behaved child in the world, and never put the work in in the classroom, so I probably wasn’t destined to be an accountant or a lawyer.”

The only time that David has behaved in a less than thoroughly professional manner was when he passed up on a ride to go raving in Ibiza.

“Yeah, it was a 50/1 chance, so the likelihood of me winning was fairly slim. I’ve been to Ibiza twice now, and it’s a different world. There’s a brilliant venue, the Ocean Beach Club, that Gary Lineker’s brother, Wayne, runs.”

What would constitute a good 2018 for David Mullins?

“Plenty of winners! The Cheltenham Gold Cup is the purist’s race, so it’d be good to get a ride in that. Not breaking my collar-bone again would be a plus too!”

David Mullins on why he loves the Dublin Racing Festival

“Leopardstown is where you go for everything in racing – it’s a great track that every jockey wants to ride around. The Dublin Racing Festival has seven Grade One races and €1.5 million in prize money this year, so it’s one that owners and trainers want to be at too. Spectator-wise, Leopardstown is known for the craic, which will be added to by the music and comedy they’ve got lined-up. It’s one of the meets that everybody looks forward to.”

David Mullins will be at Leopardstown on February 3 & 4 for the Dublin Racing Festival 2018