Cullin Hills has become the first Yorkshire-trained winner of the Connolly’s RED MILLS Leading Horse award.
A six-year-old she is also the youngest mare to land the title since it was introduced in 1970, and the first of her sex to do so since Beth Roberts’ Chesnut Annie took it in the 2011/12 season.
With one meeting remaining of the current season she cannot be caught for the title, while two further championships were decided last week with Bradley Gibbs winning the Point-to-Point Racing Company’s Leading Hunter Chase Rider title and Cheshire-based Joe O’Shea taking the same sponsor’s Leading Hunter Chase Trainer award. Gibbs rode four winners, while Time Leader’s victory at Cartmel on Wednesday carried O’Shea to five wins.
Cullin Hills is owned and trained by Will Milburn, who works as assistant trainer to Mark Walford in the village of Sheriff Hutton. She recorded seven wins and two placings in point-to-points during the season and she also finished second in Hexham’s Heart of All England Hunters’ Chase. The Chloe Newman-trained Ed The Red recorded six wins, while five horses scored five times.
They included the David Brace-trained Looksnowtlikebrian who was entered but did not run at Bratton Down yesterday. With one meeting left this season – at Umberleigh on Saturday – Cullin Hills, who has been ridden in all her victories by Paddy Barlow, cannot be caught for the Connolly’s RED MILLS award.
Her most recent success came in a men’s open race at Hexham, but that was her 11th race of the season and Milburn was determined to swerve Stratford’s hunters’ chase evening which took place on Friday. He said: “After Hexham I took her shoes off and chucked her out in a field to avoid temptation.”
Cullins Hills was bred by Nunstainton Stud’s Chris Dawson and sold by him to Milburn and Emma Todd for £2,500 as a four-year-old at Goffs UK’s August Sale. Ahead of her first run at Sheriff Hutton in January last year her teeth were checked over and given the all-clear, but after she ran out in her first two races she was reassessed by a vet and two wolf teeth were removed. She won her next start and has shown steady improvement ever since.
The Leading Horse award was first run in 1970 as the Grand Marnier National Owners Championship. Since then three horses have shared the most wins – Little Fleur (in 1978), Brunico (1992) and Melton Park (1993) all recorded 12 wins – while the youngest winner is Findlay’s Find, who was a five-year-old when landing nine of 13 races for South Wales trainer Paul Miles in 2010/11.
Will Milburn, trainer of Cullin Hills **Carl Evans