Patrick Mullins sets sights on UK amateur title Sixteen-time champion amateur jockey Patrick Mullins has set his sights on being the first Irish-based rider to win the UK’s corresponding championship and tomorrow travels to Lingfield in pursuit of another success. The UK Amateur Jockeys Championship has, in years past, been won by Irishmen Philip Fenton and Michael Hourigan junior, with Steven Crawford failing by one winner in the 2012/13 season, when based in Larne, Co Antrim. Mullins, whose father Willie Mullins was crowned the UK’s Champion Trainer for the first time in April, rides their unbeaten Full Confession at Lingfield on Monday and reports “the UK amateur riders’ championship is slightly different and starts after the Stratford meeting in June, so I currently have four winners. “I’m two behind Alex Chadwick, who rides for James Owen, and Ben Sutton, who rides a lot of his dad’s horses. You’d want at least 15 (winners) to hope to win it, which would be great and it has been in the back of my head.” Mullins, whose 850-odd winners have almost exclusively come in Ireland, added “I got a great start to the (UK) season with Fine Margin winning three times so it then entered my head. I had winners for Neil Mulholland and Harry Derham recently so had a look at it and it looks possible. I’m definitely keeping my eye on it, I’d love to go over for outside rides and we also have a few horses who can travel over and back. “Philip Fenton and Michael Hourigan junior won it in the past when they were based in England and it would be something cool to do.”
