Emmet Mullins tees up perfect Galway festival start for favourite backers

After a dreary July, the clouds parted to let the sun shine on a streak of winning favourites as for a little bit at least Monday’s start to the Galway festival suggested all might be right with the world.

If the Emmet Mullins trained Teed Up’s credentials for the featured Connacht Hotel Handicap seemed almost too perfect beforehand, for once the ideal scenario unfolded anyway as the 7-2 market leader scored.

It was a first ride in a race known as Ireland’s ‘amateur Derby’ for jockey Ray Barron and he got the popular winner home by half a length from a fast-finishing The Very Man with Shajak in third.

It was a fourth success for Teed Up at Galway, which is always a major target for his local owners Pearse and Annette Mee.

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Given Emmet Mullins’s 29 per cent festival strike-rate over the previous five years Teed Up’s victory could hardly have been better signposted for trends followers.

The rising star of the training ranks can already count himself a Grand National winner, but his ability to target the festival in Ballybrit has been crucial to Mullins’s meteoric rise. No bookie will be taking chances with any of his runners this week.

“He’s a proper little dinger of a horse and has such a good record around here – horses for courses – and he loves coming back. The reason we bought him was the Ballybrit form and he’s paid off his purchase in spades,” Mullins said.

“It’s our summer marquee festival and we don’t have too many social runners. They are all here with good chances,” he added.

Barron subsequently got a one-day suspension for his use of the whip on Teed Up but it hardly dented his satisfaction.

“I’d no ride in it all week and Emmet rang me on Friday. It was like Christmas getting the call,” Barron said.

“I was nearly there too soon turning in but he was going so well that I kind of had to kick on. He got to the front too soon but he was very game all the way to the line.

“Around Galway, riding for Emmet and the Mee family, you always have a chance,” he added.

It took until Monday’s fifth race for a run of winning favourites to come to an end when Rio Largo powered up the hill to win the first flat handicap of the week.

Even then it wasn’t an unpopular success as Rio Largo was no outsider and is owned, bred and trained by businessman Luke Comer, who’s originally from Co Galway.

By then some significant damage to the layers had already been done with JP McManus’s silks carried on the first two winners.

Over a decade after Annie Power began her racing career with victory at the 2012 festival, the Champion Hurdle winner’s first foal delivered in style in the opening race of the week.

Expecting Mystical Power, a son of Galileo, to live up to his illustrious parentage might be expecting too much but he is now two from two in his own fledgling career after scoring in a novice hurdle.

Racing in McManus’s colours, but part-owned too by John Magnier and Rich Ricci, the 6-4 favourite didn’t jump fluently for the most part but powered away when it mattered up the hill.

Whether bookmakers were influenced by his pedigree when giving him 16-1 quotes for Cheltenham at the end of July is debatable. What isn’t is Willie Mullins’s expectation of improvement to come as he confessed to having been blown away by the display.

“That was a huge performance compared to his bumper performance [at Ballinrobe]. He likes jumping but there is a lot of improvement to come as he made at least three mistakes.

“Like his mother he’s won here on his second run and hopefully he’ll be half as good as her.

“I’ll continue hurdling with him now. I don’t want to go back to the flat – I may do that next year with him. He looks like a horse that we might aim at the Royal Bond or something like that,” the champion trainer said.

The McManus team quickly doubled up in the following handicap hurdle with another favourite as Neveradullmoment scored under jockey Danny Gilligan. It meant the locally-born rider lost his 7lb claim.

Joseph O’Brien’s Mythology hit the books in the juvenile maiden, eventually scoring with authority from a slightly unlucky runner-up, Sea The Polaris.

“He’ll probably go for a Group race in Deauville in two weeks,” the trainer said. “He handles a bit of juice but I think he’ll be fine on good ground too. It looks tough going out there, so he did well to win.”

After Youcrackmeup’s 16-1 surprise in a handicap, punter’s faith was put in the Mullins-Mee combination again as the bumper newcomer Arctic Gale was a well-supported 7-4 favourite.

It was the Willie and Patrick Mullins team that spoiled the party though as My Great Mate proved too strong up the hill. The winner owned and bred by Jackie Mullins started at 9-2.

Monday’s opening day festival attendance of 16,718 was a 10 per cent increase on last year’s corresponding figure of 15,179.