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Racehorse trainer Willie Mullins, who won the Grand National yesterday, has spoken about the owner of the victorious Nick Rockett, who passed away from cancer in 2022. The former jockey said he was “just speechless” while watching his son, amateur jockey Patrick Mullins, ride Nick Rockett to victory in the Randox Grand National in Aintree. The Closutton, Co Carlow, handler’s horses also came second, third, fifth and seventh in the historic chase.
Following an emotional win on Saturday, Willie Mullins told RTÉ Radio One’s Sunday with Miriam that it was “off the charts for him” to see his son on Nick Rockett, trained by him, win his first Grand National as a jockey. “I was just stunned speechless..
.watching your son winning, in our world, what's the greatest thing we can win,” he said. “To be able to leg your son up in a race like that is just an achievement in itself, and then to be able to win it and train it, it doesn't get any better.
“You must realise Patrick is a very tall guy, so every year the weights come out, he can ride about four horses in the top weights, so the amount of horses that he could ride in it over his lifetime, you could probably count on one hand. "And then, to be lucky enough to get him one that wins, it's just unbelievable. It's off the charts for us.
” Read more The owner of Nick Rockett, Stewart Andrew, whose wife Sadie died from cancer in December 2022, just five days after watching Nick Rockett in his debut race, was also emotional watching the victory. “Sadie, Stewart’s wife, was in the same class, and he actually sent me a photograph of our first Holy Communion last year,” Mr Mullins said. “I just happened to meet Sadie at the races one day in Cheltenham, and we sat down, had a cup of tea, and just spoke about our lives since we last met over 60 years ago.
“And coming away from that conversation, she said to Stewart: ‘I want to have a horse with Willie’. And they rang me up shortly after that, and we picked out a horse, Nick Rockett, and went on from there. "She wanted the horse to run in November, whatever year before he was a four-year-old.
Normally, I wouldn't have those types of horses ready at that stage of the year. I said: ‘Okay, we'll do that for her’, and this was for Stewart's 60th birthday. “We got the horse ready, he finished fourth.
In the meantime, Sadie, who would be a lovely, healthy woman, had gone in for a regular test and got bad news, and she died within three months. "Her name is still on the race card as being the owner, we never took it off. And the whole emotion of the whole thing.
“We were making the trip to go to the Melbourne Cup and chatting to Stewart one day on the phone, I just said: ‘Look, come away with us. Come on down to Australia for the couple of weeks that we were going,’ and he did. "He just [got on] fantastic with all my pals, and he came back again this year.
So, we’ve become good friends on the back of the whole thing, and he's a great guy,” he said. Mr Mullins was notably emotional yesterday after he saw his son winning the coveted jumps race. “From the time the horses came around the elbow, and then I could see Patrick lengthening his stride, and I said: ‘That's it’.
I couldn't shout, I couldn't do anything. "I could just breathe and try and breathe heavier and catch more air in and then I just sort of broke down and just lost it and couldn't believe it. “I couldn't pull myself together.
And that was thinking of all the people that you’d wish were there and enjoy it. “It took me a long time to get it all together. At this stage, I still didn't know that we'd finished third and fifth and seventh, and I didn't care.
It was nothing else in my mind, just that Patrick had ridden a winner. "I said: ‘There's only one horse I need to watch, the one my son is riding’. Not because he had a chance, but he was my son, and if he got a fall or carried out or something stupid happened, I wanted to at least know how he was getting on, and that's what I did.
“Every fence, it was just my eyes on him and on these colours, and purely from a father-son point of view, nothing to do with racing,” he added. The father-and-son duo are now getting ready for the homecoming in Carlow this week. “We'll probably have a parade through Leighlinbridge, as we usually do, and visit all the different shops and pubs and and bring the horse around,” he added.
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