Patrick Mullins says Reaching High's run at Leopardstown on Friday will be a learning expedition with a view to tackling Royal Ascot in the first staging post of a link-up between his trainer father Willie and Britain's King Charles III and Queen Camilla.
The horse, which was previously under the stewardship of the now retired trainer Michael Stoute, has been at the Mullins yard since the spring.
But a debut for the Mullins now beckons in Friday's Leopardstown Lady Riders Handicap.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1's Morning Ireland, jockey and assistant trainer Patrick Mullins outlined how his father Willie came to terms with Britain's royal couple to train Reaching High which was bred by King Charles' late mother Elizabeth II.
"My mother and father, Willie and Jackie, were involved in the royal procession at Royal Ascot and obviously they got to meet the king and queen through that and I think they hit it off quite well and a few months later then, we got contacted to ask whether we would be interested in taking Reaching High and of course we said yes, we'd be delighted," he said.
"Camilla is a huge fan of racing and I think she's been over to visit several studs and yards in Ireland before.
"But King Charles did ride at the Cheltenham Festival when he was a prince - I think himself and Ted Walsh might have ended up in the back of a fence together - that was what I was told anyway."
Reaching High was sired by Sea The Star but it's through the four-year-old's mother Estimate that the Mullins clan had a prior connection, Mullins added.
"He's by Sea The Star, obviously a great Irish champion of our lifetime," he said.
"But he's out of Estimate. His mother is Estimate who won the Ascot Gold Cup for the queen (in 2012).
"But in doing so she beat a horse of ours, Simenon, by just a nose, by an inch maybe.
"And of course that would have been our biggest flat win. We haven't had a bigger flat win before or since.
"So for one of Estimate's offspring to then come over to Closutton, it's a nice round-about."
Mullins said Friday would be revelatory in terms of paving a pathway towards brighter lights for Reaching High in the future.
"The plan is to see if we can get to Royal Ascot and this run will tell us a lot about him," he said.
"Jody Townend is going to take the reins, so no better woman. She won the Champion Bumper in Cheltenham for us this year and we're expecting a good run but I think it's very much a learning expedition."
Mullins also paid tribute to his former housemate Rachael Blackmore who on Monday announced her retirement after a glittering 16-year career in the saddle. He said her success was the result of a peerless work ethic.
"When we started, Rachael and Brian (Hayes) her partner and myself, when we started living there, Rachael was a relatively young, successful amateur and myself and Brian would have been going racing and Rachael would have been at home with not many rides and very frustrated," he said.
"So we've had a front row seat to her journey and it's been extraordinary to watch. To get to where she got to from where she came from is incredible and she has incredible drive, grit, determination, passion, desire.
"And people talk about horses ran for her but she had to work very hard to become as good as she did. It wasn't a natural talent.
"She had to really put her head down and work hard and look, she did it all and as far as I'm concerned, nobody did it better."
