Fact To File

The Cheltenham Festival is jump racing's equivalent of the Champions League final, and Fact To File has won there two years running, on 13 March 2024 and 13 March 2025. Two wins from three visits to the track makes him something of a course specialist, and the manner of his most recent Festival success underlined exactly why. Mullins reported that jockey Mark Walsh barely had to ask a question off the final bend — the horse jumped clean, travelled well, and won with his ears pricked. "I felt coming here he'd win it," Mullins said afterwards, before adding that the performance suggested Fact To File might even have been capable of pushing the outstanding Galopin Des Champs in the Gold Cup, the race one rung above. That is high praise in any language.

The partnership with Walsh has been quietly brilliant. In eleven races together the pair have won five times — that is roughly 1 in every 2 rides, a 45% win rate that is extraordinary at the top level of the sport. Walsh's approach is instinctive rather than mechanical; after a race at Leopardstown in February 2026 — the horse's most recent win, just three months ago — Mullins noted that Walsh had been "adamant" about how he wanted to race. They found a perfect rhythm and it showed.

One more thing sets Fact To File apart: he is a horse who genuinely thrives in the wet. On soft or muddy ground he has won 4 of his 5 races — an 80% win rate that is almost freakish. When the rain comes down at Cheltenham in March, that is a very useful thing to know. In a career that has seen him compete consistently at Class 1 level — the very best races in Britain and Ireland — he has won 2 of 4 at that grade, a 50% record that puts him firmly in the elite bracket. This is a horse who belongs on the biggest stages, and keeps proving it.