Willie Mullins keeps having his great ambition of Melbourne Cup success dashed - but the master Irish trainer has now achieved the impossible dream of saddling the first three horses home in the world's greatest steeplechase, the Grand National -- with the winner being ridden by his son.

The 68-year-old, normally a measured, unemotional figure, ended up in floods of tears at Aintree on Saturday after his 35-year-old lad Patrick joined the list of amateur jockeys who've won the National as he piloted home 33-1 long shot Nick Rockett for the most heartwarming of triumphs.

Two-and-a-half lengths behind the winner was the Mullins-trained 2024 victor I am Maximus and third-placed Grangeclare West.

For good measure, amid the greatest training feat in the great race's 186-year history, Mullins also saddled the fifth-placed runner, Meetingofthewaters, and the seventh, Minella Cocooner.

Afterwards, the winning horse's owner Stewart Andrew revealed how Mullins, disappointed following the failure of his fancied horses, Vauban and Absurde, at last year's Melbourne Cup, had told him in a bar there at 2am about his grand plans to get Nick Rockett to the National.

Andrew's late wife Sadie, the horse's co-owner, had died in December 2022, five days after watching Nick Rockett in his first race, but Mullins had plotted a program to get the horse to achieve its full potential at Aintree.

"Sadie would have loved today - she was up there, she'll have had a tenner each-way, I guarantee you!" said Andrew.

Willie Mullins was just as emotional. "It is lovely to be able to give your son a ride in the National," he said.

"But to be able to win it is just unbelievable.

"This is the summit for me, I don't think it can get any better than this. It's just huge. It's like something out of a Disney film."

Son Patrick was clearly in agreement after his dad's third National triumph, following I Am Maximus last year and Hedgehunter in 2005, in the 177th edition of the race.

"It's something I dreamed about since I was a kid," said Patrick.

"It's a cliche, but when I was five or six years old, I remember reading books about the National. To put my name there is incredibly special."