{"id":686267,"date":"2026-01-10T07:35:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T07:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/686267\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T07:35:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T07:35:13","slug":"sober-looks-ready-to-pass-an-early-test-for-willie-mullins-at-punchestown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/686267\/","title":{"rendered":"Sober looks ready to pass an early test for Willie Mullins at Punchestown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Jody Townend, aboard Bambino Fever, celebrates after winning the Champion Bumper at Cheltenham last year - her brother Paul will be the saddle for the mares maiden hurdle at Fairyhouse today. Photo: Sportsfile\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/7a2a8432-3b66-4f73-a5f0-8069c16ccc5f.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Jody Townend, aboard Bambino Fever, celebrates after winning the Champion Bumper at Cheltenham last year &#8211; her brother Paul will be the saddle for the mares maiden hurdle at Fairyhouse today. Photo: Sportsfile<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Much has been made of the form that Willie Mullins&#8217; stable was in over the festive period, but it looks like the Closutton maestro is set to go up a gear.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Mullins has played second fiddle to Gordon Elliott so far this season and is nearly \u20ac1m in arrears in their trainers\u2019 championship battle, but this is typically when he starts ramping things up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jody Townend, aboard Bambino Fever, celebrates after winning the Champion Bumper at Cheltenham last year &#8211; her brother&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":686268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4107],"tags":[163863,288,103729,1071,79,16,15,2805],"class_list":{"0":"post-686267","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-gordon-elliott","9":"tag-horse-racing","10":"tag-michael-verney","11":"tag-racing","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-willie-mullins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115869655010870498","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/686268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}