Can anyone stop the Mullins machine?

It shall henceforth become known as Willie Week. Or Week of the Willie. Or something in that vein that doesn't sound quite like an old Soho carnival.

Willie Mullins sweeping all before him at the Cheltenham Festival has become one of the very few certainties in sport. And yet watching it all unfold every March remains as decidedly thrilling as ever. But the 2024 Festival brought new layers of excitement to the Prestbury Park theatre as the Closutton maestro tethered on the brink of history. Coming into the Festival he was six wins away from his 100th Cheltenham winner, a milestone that would've been beyond conceivable only a few years ago. And given the Carlow handler hasn't come away from the Cotswolds with less than six winners since 2019, history seemed inevitable.

When Mullins saddled his first Cheltenham winner, Wither or Which in the 1996 Champion Bumper, Fulke Walwyn was the most successful trainer in the history of the Festival. The British trainer had 40 Festival wins across four decades. Mullins was just happy to get on the board in 1996 - as any up-and-coming trainer is at that time of the year.

Despite the Mullins lineage from which the current champion trainer spawned, few would have predicted just how successful this softly spoken trainer would turn out to be. Over the course of the following three decades though, a deadly determination has been exposed beneath that serene exterior. He rules the jumps season with an iron fist.

Still, to say Mullins has an innate ability that no other trainer has would be to do him a great injustice. For it took him 19 years to match Walwyn's record when winning the County Hurdle with Wicklow Brave. His journey has been one of perseverance and fixations and a never-ending pursuit of new edges and ideas.

The Irish champion trainer had long announced himself on the scene when he reached Walwyn's record in 2015 - and yet even then it seemed utterly ludicrous to entertain the thought of the 100-winner milestone being within his sights. After all, he had only won his first championship race at the Festival back in 2011 and had still to win any of the other three. Yet after two decades of grinding at the coalface, with much of that time in the shadows of England's best trainers, it took him only nine years to saddle his 100th winner last Wednesday afternoon when Patrick Mullins rode Jasmin De Vaux to secure a 13th Champion Bumper victory for his father.

For years the racing public have been looking for the secret formula that makes Mullins tick. He doesn't necessarily splash the cash as much as other trainers at the sales and yet, year after year, he manages to produce the best new talent. He hasn't been immune from setbacks either and somehow always returns back stronger.

Ask any of those close to him and they'll point to the quiet persistence that runs through all of his successes, that desire to always find new ways of going about business. But, perhaps, there's a little fear beneath that pristine brown trilby, too.

In an interview with the Guardian ahead of the Festival, the 67-year-old admitted that the expectation is "heavy" every year as Cheltenham approaches.

"Is this the year we have a blowout," he questioned, a notion at which every other member of racing's fraternity would laugh.

But the candour was revealing. That hint of fear is probably what sets him apart. He had to endure the lean years before arriving at his greatness and he knows that there are more than enough talented individuals within racing capable of preying on his weaknesses should they be revealed. As they should.

Unfortunately for every other operation in Ireland and Britain, Mullins’ stomach for the game only seems to be growing. And in racing, sexagenarians are no old timers. Walwyn trained his last Cheltenham winner when he was heading into his late 70s. Nicky Henderson, Mullins’ greatest rival on the other side of the Irish Sea, is a few years older than the Irish history-maker, and is still producing some of the best horses in training.

Among the men that met Mullins in the parade ring last Friday was 92-year-old Mick Easterby, the esteemed Yorkshire trainer who continues to send out runners in both the jumps and on the flat. There's no law forcing Mullins to hand in his licence any time soon either.

All recent evidence suggests that he is in fact only entering his prime years.

Until Al Boum Photo won the Gold Cup in 2019, Mullins had come to terms with the idea of never winning jump racing's blue riband event. And he become happy with his lot. But five years after winning his first, Mullins is now only one win away from being the joint winning-most trainer in the history of the Gold Cup - Tom Dreaper currently holds the record with five wins. In next year's race, the three-in-a-row-seeking Galopin Des Champs may face his toughest Cheltenham test yet in the form of Fact to File, the very promising seven-year-old that won this year's Brown Advisory Novices' Chase. And as it happens, both stars are trained by Mullins. This year's intimidating team could be surpassed by an even stronger stable of stars in 2025.

In last year's trainers' championship, Mullins became the first trainer to win more than €7 million in prizemoney in a single season. This year's championship has been all but over for some time. There is little left for Mullins to do bar raising the pedestal as high as possible for the next generation.

When that rival eventually comes along, Mullins will be at his most dangerous. After going two days without a winner at the 2017 Festival, he famously bounced back on the Thursday with a famous four-timer. After once again drawing a rare blank last Thursday, with no Closutton horse even hitting the frame across the card, it was immediately acknowledged that he would most likely bounce back with a vengeance. And he did. He won the opening two races on the Friday, before saddling the Gold Cup winner, and for an hour or two it looked like he may even break his record of 10 winners at a single festival.

Alas, it wasn't to be.

There's always next year's Willie Week.