Irish Sports Journalist of the Year 2025 Derek 'One F' Foley interviews Racing Journalist of the Year 2025 Patrick Mullins and Ernest Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald, JR Tolkien, Roddy Doyle, Jack Kerouac and Ross O'Carroll-Kelly sit in
There isn't a course in Ireland that hasn't had his six-foot-two, 155lbs frame pass the winning post ahead of the rest. Yet his latest triumph had less to do with thoroughbreds such as Sharjah, Cousin Vinny or Annie Power as it has to do with wordsmiths such as Cormac McCarthy, Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald.
Less concerned with delivering pots loads of prize-money - €728k in 2023/24, €842k in 2022/23, €968k in 2021/22 than it has to do with No Country for Old Men, The Old Man and the Sea and The Great Gatsby. READ MORE: Henry de Bromhead explains Cheltenham 'stress' and breaks down his chances for festival week READ MORE: Flier, Valet, Jockey - the extraordinary Sean Flanagan will arrive in style, be turned out in style Mullins was recently voted Racing Journalist of the Year for his semi-regular, offbeat column in The Racing Post. It’s how he tells ‘em. Because even at famed Clonsutton where trophies festoon Willie Mullins’ cluttered office area - a charming multi-room period cottage - there is quite the wow factor about their only son's latest capture. "The Racing Post would ask 'would you do this or would you talk to this person?' and I can kind of say yes or no," he says. "I feel it's much more difficult to write it every week. That's a job. You're trying to think of new things all the time. I don't have to do that so this suits me, it is very much easier. "So whenever I am writing something and I'm interested in it, it's something I want to do, and that's a great place to start from, isn't it?" Mullins fighting racing weight in just over 11 stone but his traveling weight has that bit extra, a novel in a jacket pocket. "When I'm reading a good book, I take out lines or words or ideas that I like and I have my list on my phone so sometimes, if I'm doing something, I look down through my notes and say 'Oh, that could fit into this'. "Then I can pop that over because what I love about this is, whenever trying to paint a picture with words, it's putting a puzzle together. "It is that you are trying to put the right paragraph in the right place but that word you might originally have at the start you might notice it is better near the end of the sentence. "Or sometimes you might love a paragraph and you look back at it. That paragraph might be a really good one but it is the last paragraph so it is in the wrong place, it needs to be moved up. "I had a piece done with Keith Donoghue and his struggles with his weight and his health the other week and when I wrote my last paragraph I knew I had to take it up higher so I just adjusted it from there." More recently Mullins has been dashing around UK tracks chasing winners, visiting places everyone knows the name of but have no idea where they are on the map, whether they are north, south, east or west, towns or fields. Sign up for our Cheltenham Festival news service on WhatsApp Click on this link or scan the QR code to receive the latest Cheltenham Festival news and top stories from the Irish Mirror direct to your phone on WhatsApp. If you don’t like our community, you can check out any time you like. If you’re curious, you can read our Privacy Notice. This comes following declaring his intention to ride a winner at every racetrack in the UK and this connected directly to his zig-zag Hansel and Gretel trail of winners in recent weeks. There was Armed and Fabulous at Newcastle, More Coko at Carlisle, Chart Topper at Wetherby, Jarrive de Mee at Catterick... It's an odyssey hoping to span the 59 tracks from Perth in Scotland to Newton Abbot, Devon, down south and our luck is that the jockey's favourite reading has been firmly set in fiction . And allows for breadth and scope to write of not just what happens between white-flag-raised and winner-alright, but take on excursions to football - if you are a Leeds/Man Utd/Norwich fan stay tuned - and all besides. There is devil and often devilish in his detail too, often touching homage to another of his favorites, Jack Kerouac who is famous for his work On The Road. Indeed, if someone were to buy a horse now and call it Sal Paradise they could be at the business end of a very big story, front page stuff, in about three years time; Sal Paradise is the hero/anti-hero Kerouac ground-breaking novel On The Road. There was his astonishment in a field in north Yorkshire: "We get breathalysed before racing. In Catterick; on a Wednesday. Tuesday nights must be big around here." And then next day in similar Wuthering Heights settings in west Yorkshire "I get breathalysed again. In Wetherby; on a Thursday. No midweek shenanigans for the English lads." Still the chance that week to be near a football mecca was too good to be ignored and he further explains: "I hop into my rented car and head towards Elland Road, where I’ve been offered a spare ticket. Denis Irwin and Eric Cantona are two of my childhood heroes, just when they were red rather than white. "I buy a Leeds scarf and get involved in every chant, blending in seamlessly, shamelessly and safely. Leeds win 2-0 and we serenade Norwich home with the original and classic, 'It’s a long way to Norwich when you’re . . . not very good'. It’s a bit different to racing, isn’t it.""I had a great English teacher at school in Clongowes, Martin Wallace and English was the only A1 I got in the Leaving Cert. "I was going to do journalism at DCU, it was there for me, but I ended up doing equine business in Maynooth instead and it was handy because it was close to Punchestown and Fairyhouse. "I remember this one thing Martin said to me 'there's no right way to write' and that struck me again recently about Conrad McCartney who wrote No Country for Old Men. "I got a present of his books last Christmas, and his punctuation is maybe not 'right' in the sense of 'right' but it's great to read and that's the important thing for me.""What I love reading most is fantasy novels, I loved reading Lord of the Rings at the time while I also like a lot of the classic American writers. "There was Ernest Hemingway's 'The Old Man on the Sea' this last year, got into that but not sure he is always for me, I'd had Across the River and into the Trees and didn't quite get into it. "I read F Scott Fitzgrald's Great Gatsby, - funny enough not in the school but as a book in its own right and loved it - and another by him Tender Is The Night, thought that was great too. "There are Irish writers too, Roddy Doyle is very good obviously, I read a few of Paul Howard's Ross O'Carroll-Kelly books when I was in school and enjoyed them immensely." That's a broad enough sweep, just the types to allow him appreciate the trade he is in, characters he's met and the surroundings too and just maybe enough post-saddle to follow in the vein of horse-racing thriller king Dick Francis. Take this: "I jog a lap of the track to warm up. Walking back in I see Mick Easterby sitting by the scales, like Marlon Brando in a Godfather remake, and I head over to pay my respects. Not entirely sure what he said but still happy I did." Remembering he needs support too: "The valets are here already, of course," he writes of Sean Flanagan's attentive support company who profiled in this paper on St Stephen's Day. "They’re a bit like Santa; no-one has ever actually seen them arrive. The weigh-room is f***ing freezing. I’m that early that the heating isn’t even on yet.""The dogs are muzzled, the hares run out under a fence at the end and it's right sport. Big white hunters carrying big red-jacketed men, stands full with floods of people, bookmakers shouting and waving and writing in chalk, hip flasks of whiskey and bottles of poitin, cigars and cigarettes, two dogs, one hare, first one to turn him wins, judged by the big red man on his big white horse galloping beside them. Hare slips off under the fence, one dog goes again, one dog goes home until only one dog is left. Simple, fast and fun." As it stands, Mullins' UK checklist consists of 41 racetracks and he has ridden winners at 14 to date, clearly an adventure against more than just jumps and sticks but of gaining rides and travel itineries. This is not something achievable overnight. "This could take a few years, as there can be a lot of moving parts involved, some tracks are harder to get to than others and there is always the weather. "I was driving to Warwick and Newton Abbot in the summer when they were simply called off; got to Newcastle but Mr Escobar didn’t make it as the boat was cancelled and then the horses weren’t allowed to travel for 24 hours; looked good at Lingfield only to lose on 1/4 favouite, Full Confession! "It’s great fun, an adventure, different horses, different surrounds. different people. As I've said before, it’s like bonus levels on a PlayStation game and you can play PlayStation at any age!"JR Tolkien Author of fantasy novels The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, both latterly made into smash hit Hollywood movies. Considered the 'father' of the fantasy novel genre. Cormac McCarthy Wrote 12 novels in total including No Country for Old Men, The Road and Blood Meridian. Noted for his use of graphic violence as much as an almost punctuation-free writing style. Ernest Hemingway Hard-living author of tightly-written, epically-set novels such as The Old Man and the Sea, For Whom the Bell Tolls and A Farewell to Arms. 1954 Nobel Prize winner for Literature. F Scott Fitzgerald A prolific short story writer, there are just four novels of which The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night are considered two of the greatest 20th century American works of fiction . Roddy Doyle Booker Prize winner for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and author of the hugely popular Dublin-set Barrytown Trilogy - The Commitments, The Snapper & The Van - all subsequently filmed. Jack Kerouac Achieved acclaim with his second novel On The Road. His trademark stream of consciousness style is credited with influencing such as Bob Dylan, The Beatles and The Doors. Paul Howard Ross O'Carroll-Kelly series writer. Five-time Irish Book award winner three of which - Should Have Got Off at Sydney Parade, The Oh My God Delusion and Downturn Abbey - were from RO'CK series. Dick Francis NH champion jockey 1953/54, Devon Loch's jockey when the horse fell at 1956 Grand National. On retirement penned over 40 best-selling thrillers mostly set in the world of racing.
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