The success of Willie Mullins knows no bounds after the Closutton maestro landed the Goffs Thyestes Chase for a ninth time at Gowran Park today with Carefully Selected (9/2) scoring under an inspired ride from Paul Townend.
here was just a short head in it at the finish with the 11-year-old holding off the Gordon Elliott-trained Dunboyne (25/1) in a titanic fashion to the €100,000 showpiece.
Townend had missed racing the previous day’s racing at Fairyhouse due to illness but he showed no effects of it with Mullins hailing his genius in the saddle after yet another high-profile success.
“To give him a ride like that, that’s huge pressure on a jockey but he loves pressure and he rides better with pressure. He’s been sick off the last two days and to come back and give a ride like that, all credit to him, ” Mullins beamed.
“To me it was as fine a ride as I ever saw around this track to win a Thyestes with that sort of weight. I thought Paul gave him a huge ride, he got him away in a lovely position and then he got shuffled back in the first circuit and he had only two horses behind.
“I saw him going wide for better ground and he didn’t panic. He stayed out, kept his own position and gradually got into the race. I thought maybe after the third last that his winning chance had gone but he sat, gave him a breather over the third last, produced him at the second last and then got a good jump at the last.
“It was fantastic riding out of him. He was obviously very, very sick the last two days and to come back and ride a race like that, to me it was huge. It was a huge performance from Paul and the horse gave a huge performance as well.”
Carefully selected, a dual grade three winner over fences as a novice, has been plagued by injuries and was 1,022 days off the track before his return at Christmas and Mullins was keen to praise his charge.
“He had been off for 33 months before his last run, sometimes a horse can bounce after having a run and coming back quick enough from it. But Paul had ridden him in work the other day and he clearly knew what was under the bonnet, ” Mullins said.