MULLIN IT OVER ON WILLIE'S GLORY TRAIL

Rolf Johnson ponders the brilliance of jump racing's legendary star trainer

Genius? If you have to ask you will never know. 

Would Isaac Newton have been a genius if the apple had missed his head? If not an apple then, what was it that landed in the vicinity of a prominent racing writer that provoked him to deny the status of genius to Willie Mullins?

If, as in the scribe’s case, you can’t define what genius is, how do you state what it isn’t? What presumption: how would the apostate categorise two 16-year-old prodigies, one a darts champion, the other, a young lady who has accumulated 34 O Levels and is sitting 14 A levels?

The title ‘genius’ invariably tempts commentators to overblown language. Nothing innately wrong with technicolour language, especially if it attracts, spreads, interest in the sport, any positive human endeavour for that matter (let’s leave evil ‘geniuses’ out of it). But Private Eye’s Pseuds Corner sin bin for those who wallow in maudlin excess regularly features wannabee wordsmiths who have buried ‘genius’ under mounds of hyperbole.

Denying Willie Mullins the status as an opinion is not categorically wrong – but definitely self-indulgent, because of the absence of definition. In the ongoing abuse of the English language the word genius is sprayed indiscriminately. But signing off the outstanding trainer of his age as a very, very good operator is surely faint praise. The writer could have saved himself the effort he put into his put-down by repeating the platitude ‘hard work beats genius when genius doesn’t work hard’.