Is Willie Mullins under pressure at this year’s Cheltenham Festival?
Willie Mullins arrives at Cheltenham every year carrying expectations that would overwhelm most trainers, not because he is struggling, but because his operation has been so consistently successful for so long that dominance is now taken for granted when assessing Cheltenham races bets. When a yard sends runners to nearly every Grade 1 on the card, attention is unavoidable, and even the smallest step away from total control is examined closely.
Mullins has reached the point where success isn’t hoped for anymore, it’s just assumed. That completely changes how people judge his Festival.
The Gold Cup benchmark
In recent years, Mullins raised the bar even higher with Galopin Des Champs, who won back-to-back Gold Cups in 2023 and 2024. Those victories demonstrated the yard’s strength at the very top level and, reflected clearly in the horse racing odds, briefly made it feel as though Mullins had taken control of the Festival’s biggest race for good.
So, when Galopin des Champs was beaten last year, it was always going to make headlines. Not because it showed some massive problem with the yard, but because winning the Gold Cup had become what people expected rather than what they hoped for.
Why last year stood out
The reaction to that defeat tells you more about perception than performance. Mullins still sent out a strong team and remained competitive right through the week, but when you’ve set the bar that high, the absence of a big defining moment changes the narrative around your Festival.
For most yards, landing multiple Grade 1 wins would be a brilliant week. For Mullins, the conversation often shifts to whether he dominated rather than just whether he did well.
Depth brings its own pressure
This year, the size of his team means all eyes will be on Closutton from day one. Mullins is expected to have runners in nearly every major race, backed by a depth of quality that lets him approach Cheltenham differently from everyone else in the game.
That strength gives him options that other trainers can only dream about, but it also brings constant comparison. Every result gets measured against what the yard has done before rather than against the horses he’s actually racing against on the day. It’s an unusual position to be in.
Pressure by a different measure
The pressure here isn’t about his reputation or job security. It’s about keeping up an incredibly high level of expectation that he’s created for himself over the years. Mullins has built a situation where a Festival without a standout highlight can feel like a missed opportunity, even when the results would still be brilliant by anyone else’s standards.
It’s a position very few trainers ever reach, but it definitely comes with its own demands and its own scrutiny.
Perspective matters
Cheltenham is only one part of the season, even if it tends to dominate all the headlines. Mullins continues to operate with incredible consistency across Ireland and Britain, churning out horses that can compete at the highest level over hurdles and fences, year after year.
Whether he’s actually under pressure depends on how you look at it. By normal standards, his yard is still the benchmark that everyone else is measured against. By the standards he’s set himself, Cheltenham always carries that extra edge, because when dominance becomes what people are used to seeing, anything less than that gets people talking and questioning what went wrong.