A LIFE’S PASSION
O’BRIEN OPENS UP ON TOTAL DEVOTION TO RACING
TWO seconds. That’s all it takes for Aidan O’Brien to assess the wellbeing of the equine blue-bloods he oversees at Ballydoyle. On Monday morning last, there were almost 130 horses in two lots, galloping uphill towards him in single file on the deep woodchip. As each one passed, the analysis had to be precise. To the outsider, nothing seemed amiss amid snort of nostril and thud of hoof, but O’Brien’s instincts were telling him otherwise. He asked one of his work riders to go easy on a filly for the second run, after which he observed. ‘She’ll have an x-ray on her shoulder. She may need to rest.’
O’Brien uses his ears as much as his eagle eyes, for a horse’s breathing is informative.
‘Listen to them. You can tell if a horse is relaxed by the way they breathe. The more relaxed they are, the betwindow ter they perform,’ he said.
At the racecourse, from the Curragh to Chester, O’Brien is constantly on the move, dark glasses in place, mobile phone glued to his ear.
On this chill morning on fertile Tipperary turf, as the mist clears from the Rock of Cashel, O’Brien is chatty, engaging and content to answer any query. His relaxed mood is mentioned, at which he pauses for a moment. ‘Am I more patient? Less tense, I’d say,’ he said.
Double-armed with walkie-talkies, which are hooked up to all his riders, O’Brien opened an intriguing
into the most successful training operation in Irish Flat racing. He spoke of the benefit of having heart monitors on his horses, of the print-outs detailing their split-times per furlong – anything under 12 seconds stands out. Yet, for all his thoroughness, O’Brien is no machine. In the racing office, he leaned on staff for pointers on his horses eligible to be declared in certain races, and admitted he struggles with the remote to find Racing TV on the telly. What shone through is that Ballydoyle is where O’Brien feels utterly relaxed. This is his place, where he trains the largest string of racehorses on the island.
‘We always come back home after racing if we can. We look forward to seeing every horse every morning. I don’t have any other interests. To feel it, you have to see it. This is our hobby and our work all into one. It’s our total interest and our passion,’ he says. ‘When you’re giving every bit every minute of the day, it’s full on.
O’Brien is the master of all he surveys, but not in a dictatorial sense. He is on first names with everyone, the army of work riders, his staff and, on this morning, a cluster of Irish journalists, who all have name tags. That’s the way he likes things to be.
‘It has to be polite, enjoyable and everyone has to want to do it. If everyone respects you, and you respect everybody, then everyone will enjoy it. Everyone communicates very well. It’s all about people. Anyone who thinks it’s about themselves is wrong,’ he says.
O’Brien’s core elements in life are his family, his faith and his work.
‘It’s all about life, we’re only on this earth for a short time and the reality is to enjoy every day we are here. Life is so short. If people only realised that, the day is gone and we don’t get it back. I don’t take any day for granted. My target is to be alive this time next year. This what I enjoy doing. This is what I love.’
I asked O’Brien if he’ll follow the golf at Augusta, at which he shook his head with a chuckle: ‘This is my golf and everything rolled into one. To see a horse, to see things. It’s something you look forward to getting up in the morning to do.’
O’Brien is up every morning at 5am, like clock-work. Is it not hard some nights to switch off? ‘No. In 20 breaths I’d be asleep. I’d fall asleep anywhere,’ he smiled.
Either side of overseeing his horses go through their paces, O’Brien hosted a splendid breakfast, which he could easily have skipped on any pretext.
He reflected on the Grand National at Aintree, which he watched after racing at Leopardstown and was full of praise for Gordon Elliott and Davy Russell.
Ever have a runner in the National, Aidan? ‘Yes,’ O’Brien replied instantly. ‘Life Of A Lord. Charlie (Swan) rode him. He was seventh, and his saddle slipped at the first.’
The year was 1996 and O’Brien, at the time was dominating National Hunt racing, to such an extent that he as champion trainer six years in a row.
He might have stayed where he was, become an all-powerful fusion of what Willie Mullins and Elliott are today – just imagine - but like his namesake and the first resident trainer at Ballydoyle, Vincent O’Brien, the lure of the Flat called.
With a ready supply of ammunition from the nearby Coolmore breeding operation, marshalled by MV O’Brien’s son-in-law, John Magnier, O’Brien has been given the tools to refine for battle. That’s the challenge, one which the competitor in him feeds off as a glance at his astonishing CV illustrates.
He has been champion trainer in Ireland 21 times, in Britain six, has bagged 313 Group One/Grade One races on the Flat, including a world record 28 in 2017.
In addition, O’Brien has saddled the winners of 70 Classics and for good measure has 22 Grade Ones over jumps, including three successive Champion Hurdles with Istabraq.
‘Our brief is that the horses come in and race at two and three. In an ideal world, you’d like them to perform at two and in the Classics at three,’ OBrien states.
‘The core is the Classics. That’s when they’re at they’re most valuable, commercially to go to stud. It’s all about improving blood line and pedigrees.’ All the big races are our targets. That’s what we train them for. Every year you’re tweaking things. It’s about ensuring the horses are healthy and safe, without taking their fitness away.’
‘We’re doing our best. At every step of the way, all you can do is your best and accept the result after that. If you feel you didn’t do – your best – that’s when it gets you.’
Not 50 until October, yet fresh of face that he could pass for someone many years younger, O’Brien’s drive is undimmed.
‘I look more forward to it than before, every minute,’ he said.
He is particularly buoyed for what lies ahead after a hit and miss 2018 where a virus wriggled into his yard and halted his all-conquering gallop for a time.
‘Things didn’t run smooth last year and we’re trying to make sure it doesn’t happen again. As we get older, we feel we have more knowledge, more experience, and we would be able to handle situations better than we would have 25 years ago.’
As JP McManus once observed of O’Brien, ‘Aidan only knows way one way to do it; the right way.’