Racing: Mullins plans the perfect Christmas celebration

An audacious tilt at a windmill worth £100,000 was being planned here yesterday on a frying pan high in the Co Carlow countryside. Willie Mullins, master of Closutton stables, has his sights fixed on the six-figure bonus on offer to any trainer, jockey or owner who wins all three Grade One races at Kempton's festive festival meeting this month. Mullins has Florida Pearl lined up for the King George VI Chase, Davenport Milenium for the Christmas Hurdle and One Night Out for the Feltham Chase. "If we can get them all there healthy and sound, that's a fair raiding party," he said.

If, of course, is the crux word where horses are concerned. A walk round the élite Red Barn, where the stars live, was a reminder of the frailties, mental and physical, of the species. Here was Florida Pearl, a giant of an athlete, laid low by a virus. But though the 10-year-old will miss his intended engagement in the John Durkan Memorial at Punchestown on Sunday, he has perked up in the past few days and should soon be back on course in his build-up to the Boxing Day showpiece. "It is disappointing to miss the race at the weekend, but in training terms all it is is 10 days off," Mullins said.

In his younger days the white-faced bay, who stands 17 hands high, could well have been imagined as one of those fabled Irish beasts from the bog who would take a turn between the shafts one day and race the next. But the boy has scrubbed up well, as befits his status as winner of 14 races and one of the heroes of all Ireland, and can now be considered not only powerful but handsome. "When I first saw him as a four-year-old he just took the sight out of my eye," Mullins said. "He was the same height then as now, with sheer, raw strength and scope. For a horse his size to have stayed so sound is something special, but then he has tremendous conformation. Plenty of bone, huge feet and a huge nostril. All the things I look for in a horse."

Succeed or fail in his attempt to repeat last year's victory in the King George, the next date for Archie O'Leary's gelding will be his fourth attempt at the Gold Cup at Cheltenham. Mullins is not deterred by three previous defeats, pointing to the precedent set by The Dikler in that department. "If you've got a horse in that class, the Gold Cup is where he should be," he said. "Even if Best Mate should beat him at Kempton, Cheltenham is another day, another race."

Moving down the line of boxes and out comes Davenport Milenium, looking cross. This one's foible is that – quite sensibly, really – he loathes bad weather. Not the winter per se; he is fine when it is crisp and sunny, but with deep depressions comes deep depression, and the height of the River Barrow, flowing fast, brown and swollen through the valley below Closutton, is testament to the amount of recent rain. "He's dead as a door nail at the moment," said Mullins of the talented bay, winner of two Grade Ones in three days at Punchestown in May. "He hates wet weather. He was flying round the gallops in the autumn but as soon as it started raining that was it, he just curled up and didn't want to go out or do anything. He's three stone different in the spring, comes out of his shell and starts floating again.

"We're hoping that if the weather clears up before Kempton he'll switch back on, and if he's going to get better ground anywhere he'll get it there. But if not, we'll put him by for the spring."

One Night Out, a foot-perfect winner of his first chase at Fairyhouse on Saturday, declined to meet his public, standing with his backside pointedly to the box door. He may be joined in the novices' contest by Ballyamber, who ran second to stablemate Macs Gildoran in a decent handicap on Sunday. Those pencilled in for supporting contests at Kempton include Adamant Approach and Macs Valley. "It will be the biggest team we've taken over to Kempton," Mullins said. "Travelling horses at that time of year is not ideal, but you've got to go where the show is."

The top barns in the Mullins domain, overseen lovingly by the New Englander Tracey Gilmour, who came to Co Carlow for a month and has stayed for eight years, are an embarrassment of actual and potential riches. The other undoubted top-notcher is Alexander Banquet, who will be the second prong of the stable's attack on the Gold Cup.

With horses, the road is never smooth. Be My Royal, Saturday's Hennessy Gold Cup winner whose retirement has been confirmed, is confined to quarters for two months before his future, either as a riding horse, or as a nanny to youngstock, is decided. The gelding stood patiently yesterday, a sad sight with his battered legs, one with a ruptured tendon, strapped up.

But life goes on. Yesterday, on the wood-chip circle where Mullins does all his conditioning – slow, fast, even hurdle schooling – groups of horses cantered round and round, their hides glowing with wellbeing. Mullins's first Cheltenham Bumper winner, Wither or Witch, looked on from a field in his retirement. The three horsewalkers on the place allow inmates four or five hours out of their boxes. The key here is relaxation, and it shows.

* Dermot Weld, who last month won the Melbourne Cup with Media Puzzle, saddled Dress To Thrill to beat some of the best fillies in North America in the Grade One Matriarch Stakes at Hollywood Park on Sunday night. The Pat Smullen-ridden daughter of Danehill snatched victory in the final strides from the multiple Grade One winner Golden Apples. Banks Hill, now with Bobby Frankel, was fourth.

* Today's Newton Abbot card has been lost to waterlogging.