Prince of turf

The fourth generation of a sporting dynasty is set to win the Irish Amateur Jockey Championship for the sixth consecutive year and has high hopes for Cheltenham.

Patrick Mullins with Champagne Fever at the family stud farm in Co Carlow: 'You're only as good as the horses you ride.' Photo: Dylan Vaughan

With just days remaining until the beginning of the 2013 Cheltenham festival, Patrick Mullins sits astride a bay gelding and listens as the man standing yonder, his father Willie Mullins, directs operations with his team of riders as they take a posse of leading contenders through their final preparatory gallops.

Convention has it that the first generation begins an empire, the second grows it and the third squanders it. But here, deep in ...