Energumene at Cork: The Complete Story

Energumene is a bay gelding foaled in France in 2014, by Denham Red out of the mare Olinight, who was herself by April Night. He was sourced in France and sold on to Tom Lacey, running first in a British point-to-point before he joined Willie Mullins. He raced in the colours of Tony Bloom, the businessman and Brighton and Hove Albion owner, and was partnered in his major wins by Paul Townend, with Sean O'Keeffe taking the ride on his first visit to Cork.

A record among the best

Under Rules, Energumene won 14 of his 23 races and more than £1.2m in prize money, and six of those wins came at Grade 1 level. The two that stand highest are his back-to-back Queen Mother Champion Chases at Cheltenham in 2022 and 2023, which made him the 13th horse to win that race twice. He doubled up in Ireland as well, taking the William Hill Champion Chase at Punchestown in both of those seasons. At his peak he earned a Timeform rating of 180, a mark exceeded among Mullins-trained chasers only by Douvan and Galopin Des Champs.

He was not unbeatable. His defeats over fences included one of the great modern two-mile races, the 2022 Clarence House Chase at Ascot, where Shishkin got the better of him after a sustained duel. But the body of his form placed him among the finest two-milers of his generation, a horse whose combination of speed and jumping few rivals could live with when things went his way.

Style and character

Energumene was a front-running, exuberant jumper with an unusual amount of speed for a son of Denham Red, a stallion better known for stamina. He liked to bowl along, attack his fences, and make the running a test of whether anything could go with him. That approach suited a two-mile championship campaign, where a bold jumper who can dictate has a natural advantage, and it made him a straightforward horse to place: Mullins knew what he wanted from a season and built the calendar around getting him there fresh.

The final season

His last win came in the Grade 2 Underwriting Exchange Fairyhouse Chase on 6 April 2026, over two miles four furlongs, a slightly longer trip than the races that made his name. He was retired later that month, aged 12, after finishing third to his stablemate Il Etait Temps in the Punchestown Champion Chase. A career that had run from a French sale ring through a British point-to-point to the top of the two-mile division closed with him still competitive at the highest level.

For the avoidance of doubt, this is the Denham Red gelding owned by Tony Bloom and trained by Willie Mullins, and he should not be confused with any similarly named horse. Everything that follows concerns his connection to one racecourse in particular, the right-handed galloping track at Mallow, where his seasons so often began.

Every one of Energumene's runs at Cork came in the same race, the Hilly Way Chase, run each December. He appeared in it four times between 2021 and 2025, winning three and finishing third once. Those four afternoons are his entire Cork record, and they track his career from unbeaten novice to returning champion to honoured veteran.

The Hilly Way Chase

The Hilly Way is a Grade 2 steeplechase run at Cork Racecourse in Mallow over about two miles and half a furlong, open to horses aged five and older. It was first run in 2001 as a Grade 3 and was raised to Grade 2 in 2003. The race is named after Hilly Way, himself a dual Queen Mother Champion Chase winner in 1978 and 1979, which fits its identity as a two-mile chasing contest. It sits early in the Irish season and functions as a seasonal reappearance and trial for the top two-mile chasers, many of whom go on to the Dublin Racing Festival, the Cheltenham Festival and Punchestown. Willie Mullins dominates its history, with somewhere between 13 and 16 wins depending on the record you read, comfortably the most of any trainer, and Paul Townend is the leading jockey with nine.

Energumene's Cork record

Year	Race	Jockey	SP	Result
2021	Hilly Way Chase (Grade 2)	Sean O'Keeffe	1/3 fav	Won by 8½ lengths
2022	Hilly Way Chase (Grade 2)	Paul Townend	n/a	Won by around 15 lengths
2024	Hilly Way Chase (Grade 2)	Paul Townend	5/4 fav	Won by 10 lengths
2025	Hilly Way Chase (Grade 2)	n/a	n/a	Third to Found A Fifty

The margin recorded for the 2022 win comes from a race preview rather than an official distance and should be treated as approximate.

2021: the unbeaten novice

Energumene's first visit to Cork came with his record over fences still intact. Sent off at 1/3, he beat Daly Tiger by eight and a half lengths on what was his first start in open graded company, keeping his unbeaten sequence over fences alive. It was the run that confirmed he belonged with the best, and it set up a season that finished with his first Queen Mother Champion Chase.

2022: the champion returns

Twelve months on he came back as a Cheltenham winner, this time under Paul Townend, and won again by a wide margin reported at around 15 lengths. The pattern was now established: Cork in December, then a campaign aimed at the spring championships. That second Hilly Way launched the season in which he won his second Queen Mother Champion Chase.

2024: back from a long absence

Energumene did not run in the 2023 Hilly Way. He missed the whole of the core 2023/24 season through injury, and the race that December was won by his stablemate El Fabiolo. When he finally returned it was to Cork, in December 2024, after a lay-off of 593 days. Sent off the 5/4 favourite, he was left clear when Banbridge unseated at the last and won by 10 lengths from his stablemate Dinoblue, heading a Mullins one, two, three, four. It was a third win in the race and a comeback staged in front of the crowd that had seen him start his two title-winning seasons.

2025: caught at last

His final Cork run, in December 2025, ended the sequence. Gordon Elliott's race-fit Found A Fifty wore down the favourite Majborough to win, and Energumene came home third, denied a fourth Hilly Way. It closed his relationship with the race not with another win but with a competitive effort against younger, fresher rivals, on the course where his best seasons had begun.

The Hilly Way gave Energumene three wins, but the runs that stay in the memory are the ones that meant something beyond the result. Two of them shaped how his seasons were run, and the last of them showed how hard the race is to keep winning.

The comeback of 2024

The 2024 renewal is the run most worth dwelling on. Energumene arrived at Cork off a lay-off of 593 days, an absence long enough to end many careers. Cork Racecourse framed the return plainly in its own preview, noting that after the 593-day lay-off the proven champion two-miler would look to make his seasonal return in front of a Cork crowd. There was real doubt about whether the horse who came back would be the horse who had left.

The doubt did not last long. Sent off at 5/4, he was travelling well when Banbridge unseated at the last, and he was left clear to win by 10 lengths from his stablemate Dinoblue. Mullins saddled the first four home, a one, two, three, four that underlined how completely the yard controlled the race, and how Energumene, even after so long away, still headed it. For a horse whose seasons had twice run from Cork to Cheltenham, coming back to the same December stage after injury gave the win a weight beyond its margin.

The choice to come to Cork

Part of what made these afternoons matter was the deliberate way Mullins used the race. He explained the thinking simply, saying that normally he skipped Christmas with his Hilly Way winners and that the Clarence House Chase was what he had done previously. Cork gave him a clean two-mile prep early in the winter, a run he could aim at without committing the horse to the busier festive schedule. For Tony Bloom's stable star, that meant arriving at the spring championships fresh, with one competitive outing already behind him. The Hilly Way was not a target in itself so much as the first step on a planned road, and Energumene took that step three years running.

The unbeaten statement of 2021

His first win carried a different kind of significance. Coming into the 2021 Hilly Way, Energumene had not been beaten over fences, and this was his first test in open graded company rather than novice events. Winning it at 1/3, and doing so by eight and a half lengths from Daly Tiger, turned promise into evidence. It told the racing world that the unbeaten sequence was built on genuine quality and that the horse was ready for the level at which he would spend the rest of his career.

Caught in 2025

The final chapter at Cork was a defeat, and it deserves its place among the moments precisely because of how the race ended. Found A Fifty, trained by Gordon Elliott and sharper for a recent run, wore down the favourite Majborough, and Energumene finished third, his bid for a fourth Hilly Way falling short. The winning jockey, Jack Kennedy, called it a great race to win. Energumene ran with credit against fresher horses, which is the honest note on which a great two-miler's association with a course tends to close.

Energumene's three wins in the Hilly Way Chase put his name in the record book alongside Golden Silver, who won the race in 2009, 2010 and 2011. The two of them stand as the only horses to have won it three times, which gives Energumene a permanent place in the history of one of Cork's most important winter races. In a contest that Willie Mullins has won somewhere between 13 and 16 times depending on the record you read, comfortably the most of any trainer, being one of just two three-time winners is a distinction that outlasts any single afternoon.

His importance to the race runs deeper than the tally. The Hilly Way markets itself as a Champion Chase trial, and Energumene is the clearest modern proof of that billing working as intended. Twice he used the race as the launch point for a season that ended with the Queen Mother Champion Chase, and the trial did exactly what a trial is meant to do. When a race can point to a dual Cheltenham winner starting his title campaigns on its card, it has a story to tell about its own standing, and Energumene is the horse at the centre of that story.

For Cork itself, he was a reliable reason to come racing in December. A galloping right-handed track on the banks of the River Blackwater does not often get to host a horse of his rating, and for three winters running the Hilly Way meeting had the reappearance of a genuine champion as its centrepiece. His 2024 return, coming back from 593 days out to win in front of the home crowd and head a Mullins clean sweep of the first four, is the kind of afternoon a course remembers.

The wider legacy belongs to the sport rather than the racecourse. Six Grade 1 wins, two Queen Mother Champion Chases, two Punchestown Champion Chases and a Timeform rating of 180 place him among the best two-milers of his era, behind only Douvan and Galopin Des Champs among Mullins's chasers on that measure. Cork cannot claim those honours, because none of them were won there. What Cork can claim is the start of the journey: three times the story that ended in championship company began on its turf, and once, near the end, the old champion came back to run his race and be caught. That is a fair verdict on the connection, and a good one for a race to own.