PADDY MULLINS could be heading back to Paris after a gap of 17 years as plans were revealed on Monday to run his first Classic winner in 49 seasons as a trainer in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in October.
Mullins is considering the heavyweight European championship event as a target for Vintage Tipple, who on Sunday gave the 84-year-old trainer an emotional first Classic win with victory in the Darley Irish Oaks at The Curragh.
On Monday, Mullins was roundly acclaimed by his fellow trainers and has already pinpointed another championship showdown, the Ireland the Food Island Champion Stakes on September 6, for his bargain buy.
Thereafter a shot at Dalakhani, Sulamani, Kris Kin and others in the Arc is an option – provided the hitherto unheralded filly shows signs of becoming a better traveller.
Mullins sr will have mixed memories of Paris as it was in 1986 at Auteuil racecourse where Dawn Run, the only horse to win the Champion Hurdle and Gold Cup, was killed in action attempting a second win in the Grand Course de Haies d’Auteuil.
Ironically, it was only last month that some of those bad memories were erased as Mullins‘ son Willie won the same race with Nobody Told Me.
Tom Mullins, assistant to his father Paddy, said on Monday: “Vintage Tipple has come
out of Sunday’s race great, and with no problems at all.
‚The way she won surprised me,‘ he added. ‚We always thought she was good but we felt she would need the run yet she was an impressive winner by any standards.
“We will talk to the owner and let the dust settle before deciding on plans. The Irish Champion Stakes is definitely under consideration but if we thought she was going to get better at travelling we would put her in the Arc.
“She doesn’t travel too well in a lorry but we now have her travelling quite well in a double horsebox trailer except that she starts to sweat up when she gets near the gallops on The Curragh.
‚I would imagine that she would be alright if we kept going past The Curragh.‘
Tom Mullins added: ‚Whether she stays in training next year is a bit of an early question but owner Pat O’Donovan buys fillies for breeding and sells his colts so I could see her racing next season.”
Mullins then paid tribute to Ned Gowing, The Curragh based vet who detected a hairline fracture of the left hind cannon-bone that might otherwise have brought Vintage Tipple’s career to a premature end.
He said: “After she ran in the Athasi Stakes at the end of April she was intermittently lame for ten days. We thought that it might be nothing but finally the boss said we would send her to Ned. The fracture was so slight that it could easily have been overlooked but Ned picked it up.”
Mullins added that his dynasty-founding father had come out of the race in every bit as good shape as the filly. “The boss has taken the win in his stride and he looks fantastic!‘, he added.
