Emmet Mullins

That elite level is not just an ambition for Mullins — it is somewhere he has already been. Six times he has trained a winner in the top tier of the sport, at venues that carry genuine weight: Aintree, Haydock Park, and twice at Cheltenham in January and March 2024. Those two Cheltenham wins in the same season are particularly telling. Cheltenham is where reputations are made in jump racing; training one winner there takes skill and the right horse, but doing it twice in the space of seven weeks suggests a yard that knows how to have its horses ready for the big day.

The numbers this season add another layer. Mullins has sent out 31 winners from 255 runners — roughly 1 in every 8 — and that 12% win rate might sound modest until you realise it is up from 8% last year. Improving your win rate by half again in a single season is not accidental; it is the kind of progression that suggests a trainer still getting better at his job. When conditions turn wet and the ground becomes heavy and muddy, that figure jumps to 21%, with 11 wins from just 52 races — better than 1 in 5. Soft ground specialists are a genuine asset in a sport where the British weather rarely cooperates, and Mullins clearly knows how to have his horses primed when the rain comes.

His most productive partnership in the saddle is with jockey Donagh Meyler, who has ridden 15 winners from 90 races for the yard — wins at a rate of roughly 1 in 6. That consistency across 90 races together points to a working relationship built on trust and communication, the kind of partnership that tends to keep delivering.

At just four years into his training career and already operating comfortably among the sport's top occasions, Mullins is one of the more compelling stories in the weighing room right now. The trajectory points in one direction.