There was a moment just after the line in the Irish Gold Cup on Saturday, as Paul Townend stood up in the irons on Galopin Des Champs to acknowledge the acclaim from the packed stands, when the nine-year-old grabbed the bit and pulled for his head, apparently frustrated that he was being asked to slow down when he had only just started to hit his stride. The “turbo charge” that Townend talked about afterwards was still pumping through his system.

It was an awesome sight after Galopin Des Champs had set a demanding gallop from the off, and the bad news for any owners thinking of taking him on in the Cheltenham Gold Cup next month is that Willie Mullins’s chaser will have an extra two and a half furlongs – and a stiff uphill finish – at Cheltenham, to take out his frustration on opponents.

There is no such thing as a certainty over jumps, at Cheltenham above all, but this was such an overwhelmingly dominant performance by Galopin Des Champs that he is now odds-on at 4-6 to become the first horse since Best Mate in 2004, and only the second since Arkle in the 1960s, to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup three times.

He is also, in Mullins’s view, the best chaser he has trained and probably, by extension, the best full stop, as staying chasers require such an investment of care, patience and effort. “I don’t know whether people realise how long it takes to make a horse like this,” he said. “A three-mile chaser, the pinnacle of our jump-racing game. It takes ages.

“He goes out and takes it from the front, he grabs races by the scruff of the neck and batters off everyone. He’s awesome. I saw four others lining up beside him and I thought, they’re going to take him on from the start. Which they did, and it took him three fences to burn them off and from then on, it was just jumping and galloping.

“At the fifth or sixth last, you could see he was all wrong at it. He just stood back a full stride further than normal horses stand back and took it in his stride, and I thought: ‘Wow, you must have some petrol in your tank to do that.’ After that he just met them in his stride and he was getting a length and a half-length at all those fences.”

Galopin Des Champs jumped the last with a couple of lengths to spare and given his trademark finishing speed at the end of a well-run race, that was always going to be more than enough to seal a third successive victory in the race. Two stable companions – Grangeclare West, a 66-1 outsider, and Fact To File, the 100-30 second-favourite – filled the places, without ever managing to lay a glove on the winner.

Neither can be given a realistic chance of turning the tables at Cheltenham and Fact To File is now ante-post favourite for the Ryanair Chase on 13 March, which is probably where he will end up. It is also increasingly possible that the owners of other potential rivals will take a similar route, leaving Galopin Des Champs as an ever-shortening favourite for the festival’s showpiece event.

Mullins’s remarkable winning streak in the Dublin Racing Festival’s Grade One events ended at a dozen races earlier in the afternoon when Gavin Cromwell’s Hello Neighbour took the juvenile hurdle, but Mullins took the two remaining top-level events on the card and Majborough, who ran away with the Irish Arkle Novice Chase, looks sure to be a serious opponent for Sir Gino in Cheltenham’s Arkle on the opening day.

“Mark [Walsh] said he gave him a squeeze coming up to the winning post and there was plenty in the tank,” Mullins said. “He’s always been a standout for me, of his generation.”