There have been many remarkable races and afternoons in Willie Mullins’s training career during his rise to unprecedented dominance in National Hunt racing, but never anything to match the nine minutes of Saturday’s Grand National at Aintree, as Nick Rockett, a 33-1 chance ridden by his son, Patrick, led home a 1-2-3 for the family’s yard, with two more of their six-strong team finishing in the first seven.
Related: Nick Rockett holds off I Am Maximus to win thrilling 2025 Grand National – live reaction
Mullins has had 1-2-3s in big races before. He even had a 1-2-3-4-5 in a race at Cheltenham’s festival meeting last year and the concentration of jumping talent in his yard, as a result of the huge demand for his services, means he often has a fair percentage of the field in some of the sport’s major events.
But the Grand National is a handicap, a race in which every horse is weighted according to ability, and the one that every owner, trainer and jockey dreams of winning from their earliest days in the sport. Mullins had six runners in the 34-strong field, and only Appreciate It, who was brought down at the 21st, failed to break into the first seven.
Another measure of the scale of Mullins’s achievement is that he picked up about £860,000 of the £1m in prize money on offer. That was enough to see his odds to repeat his feat of last year, when he was the first Irish trainer for 70 years to win the British trainers’ championship, collapse from around 4-1 to odds-on.
And the sweetest moment of all for the trainer was to welcome back his son – and assistant – after a huge achievement of his own, as a rare amateur to win the Aintree spectacular. Patrick Mullins is not, it is fair to say, a run-of-the-mill amateur, and would have been more than capable of holding his own in the professional ranks if he could face the daily grind and the constant battle with the scales.
He also gave Nick Rockett a beautifully judged ride, arriving to lead at the final fence and leaving I Am Maximus, last year’s winner, to repeat the burst of finishing speed that carried him clear on the run-in but with an extra half-dozen pounds on his back.
I Am Maximus, who set off at 7-1, gave his all but the acceleration was not there to get him past Nick Rockett and his determined jockey, who kept the winner staying on to the line for a two-and-a-half-length success as Grangeclare West, another 33-1 shot, finished another half-length away in third. Iroko, the 13-2 favourite, was next across the line in fourth, denying Mullins a clean sweep of the major placings, two and a quarter lengths in front of Meetingofthewaters.
In all, 16 of the runners completed the course and at the end there were a dozen within striking distance of the leader as they crossed the Melling Road for the final time and started the run towards the final two fences. There were three fallers – Kandoo Kid, Perceval Legallois and Broadway Boy – and one unseated rider, while 13 were pulled up by their jockeys when their chance of a place had gone. Broadway Boy and Celebre d’Allen were being assessed by vets on Saturday night and the latter’s jockey, Micheál Nolan, was given a 10-day ban. The British Horseracing Authority said he had “continued in the race when the horse appeared to have no more to give and was clearly losing ground after the second-last fence”.
The winning trainer, understandably, struggled to contain his emotions in the immediate aftermath of the race, as the scale and implications of the result were still sinking in.
Ffos Las 1.50 Tutti Quanti 2.25 Newton Tornado 3.00 Paddy In The Caddy 3.30 To Be Sure 4.05 Jasmine D’Airy 4.40 Copper Jack 5.15 Palawan Du Mazet
Plumpton 2.10 Walks Like The Man 2.45 Time For Tea 3.20 Public Enemy 3.52 Despereaux 4.27 John Betjeman 5.02 Aj’s Diamond
Southwell 3.45 Nightime Dancer 4.20 Moulin Booj 4.55 Aramram (nap) 5.30 Infantry Officer 6.00 Blue Bolt 6.30 Royal Velvet 7.00 Dividend (nb
“This is the summit for me, I don’t think anything can be better than this,” Mullins said. “I never thought it would happen, and here we are. To put your son up on a Grand National winner … What a special day for him, as a jockey and as a person. To win a Grand National as a trainer, wow, how wonderful. To have the two combined, I can’t explain it. I can’t comprehend it and I find it hard to take.”
Mullins later compared the moment to “being manager of a World Cup team and having your son score the winning goal,” and recalled having “just lost it completely” as Nick Rockett crossed the line.
“I thought I Am Maximus was nearly going to beat Nick Rockett,” he said, “but when Patrick straightened up and got the rail on his inside, I knew that was it and I just lost it completely, being the lucky guy that can leg your son up on a Grand National winner.”
Patrick Mullins is one of four cousins in the extended Mullins clan who are involved in jumping, and after Emmet Mullins’s training success with Noble Yeats in 2022 and David Mullins’s win aboard Rule The World in 2016, Danny is now the only one without a win in the world’s most famous steeplechase.
Related: Grand National meeting 2025: Gold suits and tangled boots – in pictures
The winning rider walked in on foot having dismounted Nick Rockett after crossing the line to allow him to be cooled down. “I actually got too good a start, and I was having to take him back all the way,” Mullins said. “I was there too soon, it’s a fair long way from the last and I had Paul Townend [on I Am Maximus] on my outside.
“It’s everything I’ve dreamed about since I was a kid. It’s a cliche, but when I was five or six, I remember reading books about the National and watching black and white videos of Red Rum and the line, so to put my name there is incredibly special.
Kelso 1.45 Cloonainra 2.15 Diamond Dealer 2.45 Flash Du Pistolet 3.15 Cadell 3.45 Tread Softly Now 4.15 Deerstalker 4.45 The Hatchet
Redcar 1.57 Sucking Diesel 2.27 Hashtagnotions 2.57 Stratocracy 3.27 Barefoot Warrior 3.57 Convergent 4.27 Lechuga Lad (nb) 5.00 Salaria
Wolverhampton 2.35 Enrolled 3.05 Phoenix Beach 3.35 Excellent Believe 4.05 Bold Suitor 4.35 Forest Spirit 5.05 Dash Power 5.35 Sir Laurence Graff 6.10 Papa Don’t PreachKempton 4.53 Trad Jazz 5.25 Dixieland Blues 6.00 Prepare To Strike 6.30 Brasil Power (nap) 7.00 Al Ameen 7.30 Ardennes 8.00 Robusto 8.30 Laser Focus
“He’s just a brilliant horse. He’s not very big, he would be one of the smallest in the field, 50 or 60 kilos lighter than the rest of our National horses today, but he’s as brave as a lion.”
Mullins completed a day beyond imagining for his family by steering the stable’s Green Splendour to victory in the final race of the meeting, adding another £28,000 in prize money to what now feels like a relentless pursuit of Dan Skelton, the clear leader for much of the past 11 months, in the trainers’ title race.
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Mullins started the day with a deficit of almost exactly £1m and ended it with about £130,000 to make up in order to deny Skelton in the shadow of the post for the second year in a row. The stable currently has 13 entries in next week’s Scottish Grand National at Ayr – Skelton, by contrast, has five – and Mullins is also certain to target the valuable end-of-season meeting at Sandown at the end of the month.
“We’ll see you in Ayr,” Mullins said. “We’ll see you in Perth, we’ll see you in Carlisle, wherever there’s money to win.”
