Royal Ascot: Paul Mulrennan happy to have relieved pressure with 1000th winner before 'Olympics of racing'

There will be no fairytale 1,000th career-winner at Royal Ascot this week for Paul Mulrennan.

Sat on 999 winners while the racing world looked towards Tuesday's ride on the fancied Mabs Cross in the Group One King’s Stand Stakes as the ideal place to reach the landmark, the 37-year-old had other ideas, sneaking in number 1000 in the somewhat less royally-named Lakeside Village Outlet Shopping Doncaster Handicap on Sunday.

Despite the relative lack of fanfare in a profession where timing is everything, Mulrennan is pleased enough with his.

“It’s nice to get it now, before Ascot, so I can really go down there with a clear head,” he told Standard Sport. “It’s been knocking on the door for quite a while.

“Last year I was doing very well and I was getting very close to it and got injured, so it was a bit of a kick in the teeth.

"This year I’ve been counting down the winners, but they were a little bit thin on the ground at the start of the season. I can’t believe it, I’ve finally got there.”

Of that 1000, just one has come at the royal meeting, in partnership with the James Given-trained Dandino in the King George V Stakes back in 2010.

However, experience has taught Mulrennan just how valuable that sole triumph is.

“[Jockey] Jamie Spencer did an article in the paper a couple of days ago and said [legendary trainer] William Haggas had only trained eight winners at Royal Ascot,” he said.

“I was just happy I’d had one. It’s so hard to have a winner there. It’s the Champions League, the Olympics of racing.

“You’ve got the best horses in the world, trainers, jockeys, owners everything. All the races are run at a true gallop, it’s a bit like Cheltenham, there’s no hiding place.

“You’ve got be very good to see it out. You get to that two-pole at Ascot and you see a lot of them just cut out, they can’t live with the good ones.”

Nine years on, Mulrennan still describes that Dandino success as a dream come true and pretty fair going for a lad brought up in Ealing who, despite picking up a love of racing from his cousin, ex-jockey John Egan, did not sit on a horse until he was 16.

“I always remember John coming to the house when I was really small,” he recalls. “He’d always be jetting off somewhere, Macau or Hong Kong, racing, and he’d always have other jockeys with him.

“I remember [champion jockey] Kieren Fallon coming a few times, I remember John Carroll coming the night before he won the Palace House Stakes [at Royal Ascot]. I just loved the buzz of them flying around the place.”

Mulrennan’s best chance this week appears to lie with the aforementioned Mabs Cross, Michael Dods’ Group One-winning filly, who was third in the same race last season, and who he says is “flying – in great form”.

Her two conquerors from 12 months ago are set to re-oppose, with the enigmatic but supremely talented Battaash likely to be sent off favourite ahead of the defending champion Blue Point, but Mulrennan gives his mount every chance of reversing the form in this five-furlong tear-up.

“It’s sprinters and a lot with sprinters is on the day,” he said. “They might boil over at the start or something could go wrong – sprinters are slightly different to everything else.

“The one thing with Mabs Cross is she’s so consistent, she’s only ever once finished out of the money.”

For a jockey with the talent to rack up 1000 career winners, it seems a small tragedy that Mulrennan does not have more leading fancies on his book this week.

Aside from Mabs Cross, the horse he says he is most looking forward to riding is What’s The Story, a 25-1 poke in Wednesday’s Royal Hunt Cup.

He jokes that, given the choice, he’d ride anything of trainer Aiden O’Brien’s, before settling on Arc runner-up Sea Of Class as his fantasy pick of the week.

Mulrennan is genuinely philosophical about his place in the sport.

“Listen, I’m very happy with what I've done and what I'm doing,” he says. “Some people want too much in life.

“I'm doing well, I'm making a good living, I'm happy and my family are happy. Everyone's got levels in racing and I'm doing pretty well for mine.”

Should Mabs Cross deliver win number 1,001 on Friday, he will be doing more than that.

The King’s Stand Stakes is the first race in the sprint category of the 2019 QIPCO British Champions Series. For more info go to britishchampionsseries.com