Mullins

There are few more respected figures in French National Hunt racing than Nicolas de Lageneste.  It seems as though everything de Lageneste turns his hand to, be that breeding, training or simply owning racehorses, it is a success. Last year he completed the rare achievement of being crowned champion National Hunt owner and breeder in the same season. Nobody has ever done that before.  Fewer still would be capable of nurturing a horse like Il Est Francais (Fr) (Karaktar {Ire}). Not only did de Lageneste breed the superstar chaser, who...

Dual Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Al Boum Photo (Fr) (Buck's Boum {Fr}) has been retired and will embark on a new career in eventing. The Willie Mullins-trained 10-year-old was last seen running in the Grand Steeple-Chase de Paris at Auteuil, where he made no impact and was eventually pulled up by Paul Townend. He will forever be remembered as the first horse since Best Mate (Ire) (Un Desperado {Fr}) to win back-to-back Gold Cups at Cheltenham in 2019 and 2020. Melon (GB) (Medicean {GB}), also 10 and like Al Boum...

We've had two really good festivals over the last week and the quality of racing at Goodwood was superb. Again John Gosden and Frankie Dettori took centre stage but I think the highlight was really Deirdre (Jpn) winning the Nassau Stakes. Japan is such a great racing nation and I think we'll see more and more Japanese horses coming in this direction to race and that's only good for the sport and for international racing. I hope that the connections of those Japanese horses racing in this part of the...