Jef­frey Ross

Willie Mullins nigh on dom­i­nates the Irish rac­ing scene and with sta­ble jock­ey, Ru­by Walsh, ap­pears to win every im­por­tant race, of­ten fin­ish­ing sec­ond with oth­er run­ners. Do se­ri­ous-mind­ed Irish pun­ters ac­tu­al­ly prof­it by just putting down their mon­ey and pick­ing it up (with prof­it!) when they pass the post?

Al­though the strike rate of this phe­nom­e­nal­ly suc­cess­ful Emer­ald Isle train­er is way above 50 per cent the start­ing prices are usu­al­ly pro­hib­i­tive and one ac­tu­al­ly makes a prof­it by lay­ing them, in the long run!

Back­ing short-priced win­ners is prob­a­bly good for con­fi­dence, 1/2, 4/7, 4/6 and some­times even mon­ey favourites car­ry "Un­cle" Ru­by and he knows win­ning en­clo­sures like the back of his hand. The con­veyances, off the Mullins' as­sem­bly line(s), are like ma­chines but, do you re­alise, that if just two out of ten fail then it's like play­ing snakes and lad­ders be­cause you are back where you start­ed.

In a few weeks, Willie in­tends repli­cat­ing his tremen­dous­ly suc­cess­ful 2015 Chel­tenham Fes­ti­val mis­sion with an­oth­er bat­tal­ion. There's ac­tu­al­ly talk, spec­u­la­tion, giv­en the colos­sal prize-mon­ey on of­fer through­out four fab­u­lous days in March, that Mullins could end up cham­pi­on train­er in Eng­land!

What an in­cred­i­ble prospect, imag­ine the ex­cite­ment of watch­ing these mag­nif­i­cent crea­tures take on our very best on Prest­bury Park, home of Na­tion­al Hunt rac­ing, against a back­ground set­ting that is breath­tak­ing to say the least, with rolling hills as far as the eye can see from a su­perbly-cit­ed grand­stand.

My first ven­ture to the course was in 1963 when Arkle stormed up the hill and be­gan a dom­i­na­tion that will nev­er be sur­passed; Him­self was the finest thor­ough­bred I'd ever seen, jumps or flat, un­til Frankel be­strode the grade one race­cours­es three years ago with four­teen vic­to­ries, un­beat­en he was!

The time-hand­i­cap fig­ures for both were ab­solute­ly out­stand­ing, they were in a dif­fer­ent league.Watch­ing top class rac­ing is so ex­cit­ing, nerve-rack­ing, and the build up to the great­est show on earth is now un­der way. Feb­ru­ary is the month of tri­als and March the month of des­tiny.

I'll do my best to keep you ful­ly in­formed and sup­ply a clutch of good-priced win­ners, not short­ies!To­day, there are three meet­ings, Leices­ter and Wether­by (NH) while South­well stages a six-race fi­bre­sand pro­gramme on which Miss Lil­lie is a strong chance in an aged hand­i­cap over a mile.

Miss Lil­lie comes best-in judged on re­cent ef­fort on the deep stuff and mount of con­sis­tent, re­li­able, Robert Win­ston. I'm keen to move part of our op­er­a­tion to jump­ing but, as pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned, heavy ground is the case every­where and guess­ing is point­less, not to men­tion cost­ly.

Over the same course and dis­tance Sea Of Un­cer­tain­ty has an ob­vi­ous op­por­tu­ni­ty in the three-year-old hand­i­cap with Tony Rawl­in­son claim­ing a vi­tal 3lbs ap­pren­tice al­lowance.