Leave it to Mr O’Brien

Alfred Harmsworth, better known to posterity as Lord Northcliffe, was 42 years of age when he secured the purchase of The Times newspaper for the sum of £320,000 in 1908. Buying Britain’s pre-eminent paper had been his life’s great ambition but his mother feared for what this most momentous turn of events might mean.

“I’m sorry, Alfred,” she is reported to have said. “You have lost your horizon.” Her son still had 14 years of energy and achievement ahead of him but Geraldine Harmsworth’s concerns touched on an existential question as old as mankind: how do the highest of achievers keep climbing once they’ve reached their summit?

Aidan O’Brien’s CV is a sea of Himalayan peaks. His list of achievements are a Grand Canyon of sporting success: so vast that the whole is impossible to comprehend. This last 12 months have been no different with his confirmations as champion trainer in both Ireland and Britain merely the wrapping on another bounty.

His strike rate in Ireland this year (27%) was his best in two decades, the 22 Group/Grade 1 winners accumulated approaching the last week of November were claimed on home soil, across the Irish Sea, in France and the US, and they took him past the 400-mark. They included a pair of juvenile triumphs at Del Mar that brought him alongside the venerable D Wayne Lukas as the most successful Breeders’ Cup trainer of all time with 20 successes. Lukas is 89. O’Brien turned 55 in October.

There is no point in putting any of this to him. Credit, as always, is deflected and dispersed around his vast team in Ballydoyle, towards Coolmore and elsewhere. But it is worth asking just what he considers success to be.

“I don’t know really. We’ve got some results that we have some horses to retire the stud… We have to get results obviously, and if everyone looks like we’re okay going into the end of the year, and we have a chance to survive next year, that’s what we call a good year, really. I don’t think there’s any set results or goals or results that we have to get.”

All sporting empires rise and fall. Some rise again. The New York Yankees stewed through 15 seasons without making a World Series until late this October. Manchester United are over ten years in their rut going back to Alex Ferguson’s departure. Aidan O’Brien? He continues to do all this on an annual basis without any sort of North Star to act as a grand ambition. “We never have,” he explains. “We never had that, literally.” Maybe that’s part of it.

It’s five years since his sons, Joseph and Donnacha, chatted for this publication at a quiet midweek meet in Gowran and gave a glimpse into the dynamo that is their father. Joseph claimed he could never match the old man’s work ethic. Donnacha described it as “unhealthy”. Neither of them could be accused of being slouches.

The man himself has addressed this before. The job, he has said, is both his hobby and his downtime. Does that even things out on the work/life balance scale? Maybe it does. His whole family is wedded to the sport in one way or another, so it isn’t as if his immersion in racing is an oddity that isolates him inside his own walls.

But that immersion is absolutely total. It involves consistency and sacrifices. A lifelong teetotaller, his kids have joked that he can be all over the latest healthy food fads and there is still an almost boyishly thin look to his frame at the age of 55. O’Brien compares the human body to a car that only has so many miles in it, and how it won’t keep going if the engine is driven into the ground.

“Like, there’s only so many hours and so many days now, or so many years in all our bodies, and we all only get one body and it only lasts so long. There’s so many people pass away and their body is tired but their mind is still okay. So if we don’t respect ourselves and respect others we can’t preach to anybody else.”

That’s the theory. He knows, like us all, that he doesn’t always live it. Sleep has always been paramount. There is a side to him that would love to sit up and watch the nine o’clock movie with his wife Annemarie but the time just isn’t there for it right now. Maybe someday, he says. As it is, he routinely finds himself reaching the evening’s end “absolutely drained out” and with no more to give.

“You know then you’re doing too much. That’s too much. And that happens a lot.” This is the gig. And the man. O’Brien’s attention to detail is legendary. He once put it that a coat hung on a different peg in a yard could have an adverse effect on a horse, yet change in the form of innovation is always welcome. The speedometers that now adorn the Ballydoyle gallops were installed on the urging of the two boys.

A trip around all 700-plus acres of the stables in Tipperary showcases a replica of Tattenham Corner’s sharp, sloped bend at Epsom – the work of Ballydoyle’s founder, the unrelated Vincent O’Brien - and the fact that, unlike most trainers, there are still no mechanical horse walkers. 

Doing it manually allows the animals to bring out their personalities. He wants that. Every little detail matters.

Ronan O’Gara once suggested that O’Brien’s success boils down to just how much he cares. It shows in the form of a magpie who is never not picking up tidbits but the flip side is that there is no off switch. This natural curiosity expands into the little bit of downtime he might allow himself. Even sport on TV is a source to be tapped rather than a break from the job. “One of my failures - or not a failure, whatever it is - is I’m always analysing. Everything. And people. And that’s what I do because observing is what I do every day. And because you do that with people, you do it with everything you’re watching, everything you’re listening to, it’s just a thing that you do.

“And because you’re analysing everything, everything said, every look on everybody’s face, every expression on every horse’s face, every movement: that’s what you’re doing all the time. So you’re processing a lot of stuff all the time. Like, I wouldn’t feel comfortable watching a film or anything I have to think about because then it’s not downtime.”

His former boss, Jim Bolger once said that O’Brien has a mind like a sponge. That might just be half of it. Taking everything in is only a benefit if you can filter enough back out. Many is the top sportsperson who stews on the ones that got away more than they celebrate successes. O’Brien doesn’t seem beholden to either.

Numbers alone suggest that 2017, with a Guinness World Record of 28 Group 1 winners, was his best season of all. Eight of the ten Classics across Britain and Ireland were claimed by Ballydoyle that season and yet he claims ignorance when asked if he could recall the pair – Enable’s wins for John Gosden in the two Oaks - that got away.

“No. I don’t remember any of them, to tell you the truth. I don’t remember because that’s gone and we’re losing races all the time. Day-in, day-out, we’ve lost a lot of races. And I remember the ones that are close up. And listen, dwelling on the past is going to take away from the future. So that’s why I don’t ever go back there.”

Maybe he really doesn’t remember those 2017 Classics, and the fact that he saddled the second and third in the Epsom Oaks and the runner-up in the Irish equivalent. Then again, it’s nine years since he said that if you don’t feel the hurt then it doesn’t drive you on to the next one.

Maybe it’s just the case that hurt has a finite lifespan. There is, as always, a remarkable openness about his own fallibility. Mistakes are referenced early and often over the course of almost an hour’s conversation. He goes as far at one point as to say that, “Most days most stuff goes wrong.” This is where all that experience, the work ethic and the refusal to contemplate complacency or standing still pays dividends.

“I know when it happens it’s my fault. And everyone knows that. You just make bad decisions, you try and cover all the eventualities, but then the stalls could be just about ready to open and you could think that, ‘Janey, I’m not after discussing this.’ More often than not that thing that you didn’t discuss will come and get you.”

All of which brings us to City Of Troy and that day in Newmarket last May when the three-year old phenom trailed in ninth in the 2000 Guineas. O’Brien knew when the star with the black mane and grey tail went into the stalls that the son of Justify was too fresh, having been worked too little over the winter.

Another month had to pass before a shot at redemption at Epsom. It’s hard to imagine what that period must have been like for a trainer, even one with his success, given the stakes and the spotlight. MV Magnier remarked after the Derby resurrection that O’Brien had been overcome with stress in the lead-up. It’s easy to see why.

Coolmore’s Michael Tabor had described City Of Troy as “our Frankel” in December of last year. O’Brien had gone on record time and again describing the horse as the best two-year old and the best horse, period, that he had trained. If there was pressure from outside the walls then plenty of that was sourced from within.

“If another bad run came, he was going to be gone,” he says now looking back. All of this was etched on his face when, surrounded by the ever-present swarm of journalists after the colt had secured his tenth Epsom Derby, O’Brien reeled off his usual praise for team and jockey and then paused before inhaling and expelling huge gulps of oxygen. The Racing Post report said it looked like his first breath in days.

“There always will be pressure with those horses. I don’t know what it is, it’s relief, and I probably do that a lot because that’s the way I just get rid of my tension. I just blow it out quick, and I don’t hold on to it. It doesn’t get inside me.

“When you’re watching those horses, those races, you’re probably not breathing as easily or fluently or as relaxed as you should be. And then the minute it’s over you just let it go and it’s, ‘Next.’ It’s a habit I probably have, but that’s the way I am. If it works for you, it’s gone. That’s the way to do it.”

The script stuck to the page for the rest of the summer. A gutsy success in the Eclipse at Sandown in July was followed by a stunning win at the Juddmonte International at York in August. And, a month later, by a trip to Southwell’s tapeta track where the bars were opened and a few thousand punters took in some prep work for his tilt at the Breeder’s Cup Classic on the dirt.

“There’s a real sense of excitement, it’s become almost like a race day,” said John Holliday, clerk of the course.

It was a decision that found some disfavour in Ireland, especially with news that the colt would retire to stud after the trip to America and confirmation with it, that one of the greats would never have run in this country from the time he won his maiden in July 2023. O’Brien gets that. He could have gone in the Irish Champion Stakes in Leopardstown but everything was calibrated with an eye on Del Mar.

“If another bad run came, he was going to be gone,” says O’Brien by way of putting context on the pressure leading into City Of Troy’s Derby victory at Epsom (HR)

There is a side to him that would love to sit up and watch the nine o’clock movie with his wife Annemarie but… he routinely finds himself reaching the evening’s end “absolutely drained out” and with no more to give (HR)

To take a horse all the way to California is to subject it to any number of variables outside your control. Opting for Southwell allowed the team to replicate at least some of the challenges. They even travelled to England with their own American starting stalls, replete with its different bell and dimensions. “We felt to give him his best shot it was to do this.”

City Of Troy’s ultimate failure in the Classic was still over a week away when O’Brien discussed all this with the Irish Racing Yearbook. It was a task, in a race never before won by the Coolmore/Ballydoyle axis, that he described at the time as “nearly next to impossible” but one where he had a “big shot”.

Win or lose in America, he was determined even then to stick to his guns. “No doubt. He’s still the best we’ve ever had.”

Best ever. It’s a moniker he has used more than once down the years. Istabraq and Galileo have long sat on a pedestal reserved for only the few. Others, Camelot and Australia among them, have been lauded in similar terms in real time. And plenty more again - the likes of So You Think 13 years ago - failed to live up to the expectation and the hype.

It is, of course, O’Brien’s job to ‘make’ stallions for a Coolmore Stud that is looking to negotiate the same sort of transition with the passing two years ago of Galileo, that it did when the mighty Sadler’s Wells died in 2011. So, best ever? If these proclamations makes sound business sense, then he offers further reason for why it can hold true time after time.

“We have had great horses like in Giant’s Causeway, all those horses. They’re all around. We had St Mark’s Basilica. They’re all great horses to go to stud. Those horses at that time were considered brilliant, and they were, but horses are even doing more now. “Times are just moving on all the time. I think (because of) knowledge, information.

Information is probably what changes the world all the time, because it’s so much at everyone’s fingertips and there’s teams working to pump out information quick to you when you want it, so that you find the right patterns to work on straight away.”

Think about how that must excite him, this man of minutiae and endless “tweaking”, as his son Donnacha has put it. If numbers matter to him at all then it isn’t so much in the volume of winners, as the dozens of yearlings that arrive in the yard at the back end of every year and the potential delivered with them.

“This is when the dreaming is done,” O’Brien said of the off-season almost a decade ago. He wouldn’t be alone in that. Ger Lyons told this publication some years ago that the potential to spot greatness in his yard every January, another Siskin maybe, made it his favourite time of the year.

If there is a North Star at all then, this could be it. It’s the endless chase for the next big thing. The promise of what’s next. And it’s a process of discovery that O’Brien gets to experience without the world looking over his shoulder, second-guessing and deconstructing every move and every decision.

“There’s probably less pressure,” says the master of Ballydoyle. “Really, every time you have runners you’re tested publicly. For that few months you’re not out there being examined, but at the same time you’re very focused. You have to work very hard then, because if you don’t put it in then… (But) that time of the year it is just a bit more chilled.” Yes and no.

The season has long burst beyond its traditional banks. Racing in America, Japan and Hong Kong meant that the traditional family holiday to the Caribbean was delayed this year but then O’Brien is renowned for spending vast chunks of even this downtime on his phone. The business of winning doesn’t stop. This is not a man who reads novels on a sun lounger. “No, I don’t read that much. I should read a lot more but I don’t and, listen, I just relax the best I can really. I’m relaxed all the time but I suppose I’m probably most at home doing what I love doing.”