Mullins lands Ryanair Chase with Fact To File and immediately targets next year's Gold Cup

The hugely impressively Fact To File (6-4 Favourite) had barely returned to the winnners' enclosure at The Festival after coming home the comfortable winner of today’s Ryanair Chase before trainer Willie Mullins was already setting his sights on next year's Gold Cup.

Last season’s Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase hero has always been a horse very highly rated by Mullins but he said the shorter Ryanair Chase was more suitable for him at this stage of his career rather than a gruelling Gold Cup.

“They went a good gallop, he stayed with them and got all his jumping right, and off the bend, I don’t think Mark was worried; he just had to get over the last two fences and he did that well.

“The manner of the way in which he won was a bit of a surprise, but I felt coming here he’d win it. But the others were good horses, anyone would love to have them.

“I do agree that he might have been the horse to give Galopin Des Champs a battle tomorrow in the Gold Cup and he was in it, but he felt it was better to bide our options. He’ll probably be a Gold Cup horse next year. He’ll be a year older and we felt that at this stage a hard race in the Gold Cup, if the ground turned up soft… It’s not like that, but that was the way I was thinking all season. JP [McManus] didn’t want him to have a very hard race in the Gold Cup this year - sometimes that can ruin a horse’s career. So next year - I’m not going to say any more about two-year plans after Lossiemouth, but another year might be right. I think that’s what we’re looking at.

“I can see where JP [McManus] was coming from originally [about not running in the Gold Cup].

0“Probably some people after the Irish Gold Cup might not have thought that he fully stayed it - maybe it was a year too soon.”