Cheltenham Festival 2025: Can anyone dethrone Mullins as top trainer?

You have to go back to 2018 for a Cheltenham Festival in which Willie Mullins was not crowned top trainer by Friday afternoon, and with the master of Closutton showing no signs of slowing down he is a short price for glory again this year. Can anyone stop him?

Although he is no price at around 1/5 with the firms already offering the market, it would take a brave punter to lay Willie Mullins in the Champion Trainer market this season considering his utter dominance over the last decade of National Hunt racing. He is unlikely to repeat the remarkable feat of being both British and Irish Champion Trainer this season with Dan Skelton ripping along in the UK, but despite this season perhaps not quite matching last campaign's glorious domination he still has quite the arsenal with bundles of bullets to fire at the biggest races at the Cheltenham Festival.

Scouring the antepost odds grids, Mullins has the favourite or co-favourite in 14 of the races set to take place at Prestbury Park, but that doesn't tell the full story/ Even in races like the Champion Hurdle and Arkle, where Britain has a star heading the market, should the superstars Constitution Hill or Sir Gino bomb out, it's Mullins' runners who are there and ready to pounce. The same is true for the Champion Chase, in which Jonbon is a hot favourite but Mullins has plenty of bullets to fire with potentially Energumene, El Fabiolo and Gaelic Warrior to take him on.

Nevertheless, you may have picked up that the three favourites just mentioned all reside with one man; Nicky Henderson. Not since 2012 has Hendo been crowned champ at the Festival, as it was Gordon Elliott in 2018 who managed to stop the Mullins juggernaut with a superb eight winners. Nicky has had some real superstars in the 13 years since he lifted this coveted prize in March 2012, but it is hard to make a case he has had a stronger team of stars and after the brilliant season he has had, he looks the only credible threat to the raiding Closutton army.

It would be almost poetic if after last season's horror show, when his horses came into the Festival under a cloud before a few poor runs and a mass withdrawal of his superstar entrants - including Jonbon and Sir Gino - Nicky Henderson's Cheltenham of 2025 would become his best of all time and see him regain a title he has won three times but not for over a decade. As is the case for anyone who dares challenge Mullins, the stars will have to align, but so far this season Henderson has decidedly won the battles against the almighty Irish champion. Could he continue to do so where it matters most?

Bookmakers have cottoned on to the potential for Henderson to get off to a roaring start, with his two best horses in Constitution Hill and Sir Gino odds on for the Champion Hurdle and Arkle respectively. He is now just 11/2 having been double that price at the start of the season, but there is certainly a world in which that 11/2 quote is a distant memory come close of play on Tuesday. 

It is probably going to take six winners for Henderson to be in there fighting, with Mullins always good for an outsider or two claiming a Cheltenham win from out of nowhere (think Absurde under an inspired Paul Townend in 2024). The two already mentioned will simply have to win on Tuesday for Henderson to get in the mix, and Jonbon on Wednesday will also have to land the odds and prove theories that he doesn't like Cheltenham are poppycock. His potential next star off the ranks Lulamba will also need to be a rocket of a juvenile and claim the Triumph, but the accumulator on this quartet is hardly a huge price at 19/1 best price. 

Outside of this quartet however, things get hazy for Henderson. He will need a week for the ages, perhaps with Lucky Place upsetting Teahupoo in the Stayers' and Mister Coffey finally winning a race in the Cross Country. Although there is certainly a world in which the master of Seven Barrows is stood triumphant at the end of the 2025 Festival as the winning most trainer, it makes more sense to simply back his four bankers that would need to win at 19/1 than take the 11/2 about him stopping Mullins.

The rest of the trainers involved will need a miracle - or perhaps a virus at Closutton - to be in with a squeak and as such the 10/1 on Gordon Elliott and even the 33/1 on Skelton, Cromwell or De Bromhead make no appeal whatsoever.