• Trainer aware he cannot retain punters overjoyed all the time[br]• ‘People are crediting us with things that are nearly impossible’Even as he was saddling a record-breaking eight winners at last year’s Cheltenham Festival,Willie Mullins could not escape the spleen of embittered losing punters. “You should beget seen the stuff we got after Annie Power,” he said here on Monday, or recalling the last-flight fall of the hot favourite for the Mares’ Hurdle which saved the bookies a multimillion-pound payout. “There were people who thought it was on purpose. It was absolutely incredible,you wouldn’t believe it.”Mullins will send approximately 60 horses from his Co Carlow stables to the 28-race Festival this year, by general consent the strongest team ever assembled for the meeting by a single trainer. Some tall-profile names beget been scratched due to injury in recent weeks, or including Faugheen and Arctic Fire,but at least half a dozen of the stable’s runners are expected to start at 2-1 or shorter. After last year’s extraordinary performance, however, or he knows that expectations are higher still.
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Source: theguardian.com