• Mullins: ‘I’ve had lots of winners but this was special’• Delta Work holds off Kemboy in Leopardstown feature
Willie Mullins has saddled more than 3,000 winners over the course of a 32-year training career, but as the 12-year-old Faugheen returned to the unsaddling enclosure here on Sunday after winning the Grade One Flogas Novice Chase, even his trainer could not remember a moment to match it. “I’ve had lots of winners but this was special,” Mullins said. “The way he battled. To come back at his age and do it on the number one stage, that’s fantastic.”
Leopardstown agreed. The grandstand emptied as soon as Faugheen crossed the line half a length in front of Easy Game, a stable companion who is half his age, to acclaim their returning hero just 14 months on from a horrible fall at the same course which left him on the turf for two agonising minutes. Twelve-year-old Grade One winners are a great rarity – only Sizing Europe (2014 Punchestown Champion Chase) and
Florida Pearl, in the 2004
Irish Gold Cup, have achieved the feat in recent decades. Victory in a Grade One novice event at such an advance age is more astonishing still and Faugheen’s connections must now decide whether to attempt an unprecedented double at Cheltenham next month.