In 2026, Willie won his fourth Cheltenham Gold Cup and his fourth Aintree Grand National. In 2025, he won the Breeders Cup. In 2024, he became the first Irish-based trainer to win the UK Jumps Trainers Championship since Vincent O’Brien in 1954, as well as the first trainer in history to score 100 wins at the Cheltenham Festival. (He’s now on 121.) Willie’s been in the saddle since he could toddle. This is an interview from 2010, when he was already an equestrian superstar.
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