Image © Healy Racing
Jasmin De Vaux will go down as the horse that supplied Willie Mullins with his record-breaking 100th Cheltenham festival success when he led home a clean sweep of the placings for point-to-point recruits in the Weatherbys Champion Bumper.
Jasmin De Vaux will go down as the horse that supplied Willie Mullins with his record-breaking 100th Cheltenham festival success when he led home a clean sweep of the placings for point-to-point recruits in the Weatherbys Champion Bumper.
A debut Loughanmore four-year-old maiden winner at Loughanmore when with Stuart Crawford, it was Mullins’ son Patrick that was in the saddle as the Tirwanako gelding came from off the pace to strike the front inside the final furlong, and he battled gallantly up the hill to fend of the Gordon Elliott pair of Romeo Coolio and Jalon D’Oudairies, two horses that won their respective four-year-old maiden races for Donnchadh Doyle the same afternoon 12 months earlier.
“He was a horse who had nothing going against them, everything else had a minor mark against them,” the winning rider said.
“The only thing you could hold against him is how he looks, he’s very small, very narrow, very short, he doesn’t do anything flashy. But when I had a look under the bonnet in Naas, there was plenty there. I wanted to be wide and out of the ruck as he’s not a big horse, so I didn’t want to be bashed around.
“He was probably further back than I wanted, but we went a real good gallop for the first six furlongs. Everytime I needed to make ground, he was able to do it. Even though we were wide, I was able to go where I wanted – I wasn’t at the mercy of anyone else. They are called bumpers for a reason!”
Gordon Elliott, trainer of both the runner-up Romeo Coolio and third Jalon D'oudairies, said: "They are two very nice horses. It would have been lovely to have won today but it's all in the future.”
The result continues a successful run in the Grade 1 contest for the Mullins stable with their pointing recruits. Twelve months earlier, Fact To File, a Grade 1 winner at this year’s festival, had come up second best to A Dream To Share, whilst Mullins struck in 2021 and 2020 with point recruits Sir Gerhard and Ferny Hollow.
