Aidan O'brien
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Aidan O'Brien It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle A silver Mitsubishi Endeavour pulls up alongside the gate. It isn't cold, but the driver Aidan O'Brien is well wrapped up in a black fleece and black woolly cap, a packet of Lockets and a packet of tissues close at hand. He barely breaks stride in his telephone conversation to extend a warm and firm hand: welcome to Ballydoyle. We arrive at the gallop just in time to see Septimus stride up the hill, followed by Egyptian Hero, an as yet unraced son of Danzig who cost $5.2 million at Keeneland as a yearling, pursued by Mahler. Aidan names the rest of the horses as they follow up the four-furlong gallop, every single one of them, one by one, by name or breeding or both. When they walk back down, the trainer stops by each one and asks every rider if he or she is happy, each rider by name, Joe or Hazel or Kotsuke, a query for one, a joke for another, a question from another. There are some 30 horses per lot, yet the trainer has as much time to spend with each rider as each one needs. If you were to go looking for the one thing that sets Ballydoyle apart as the most successful racehorse training establishment in the world, human and equine incumbents notwithstanding, you probably wouldn't find it. But if you take all the little things, all the almost negligible edges that are immediately apparent in just one morning, and add them all up, you can easily see why unprecedented success ensues. Of course they have the correct raw material with which to start. They have access to a top class breeding operation, they have the resources to be competitive at the very top end of the market in the global sales ring, and they have some of the best horse-judges in the business to finalise the shopping lists. But that is just the beginning. The attention to detail here is unyielding. Even now, as we watch the horses canter up the woodchip gallop, between us and them there is a team of about 20 people replacing divots on the grass gallop. Each rider has a GPS system strapped to his or her arm so that every piece of work can be timed and monitored. The information is logged and printed out every evening. Every piece of work is videoed, every comment that every rider ever made about every horse is recorded. Every piece of information is logged, the horse's weight, what he ate, if he didn't sleep, his temperature. If you wanted, you could look up the details on every piece of work that any Ballydoyle horse ever did. The emphasis is on keeping the horses happy. Each horse has its own paddock, a solitary haven in which he can recline or frolic after a morning's work. All walking is done by hand, not by horse-walker (ªHow would you like it if the floor was moving under your feet?º), and routine is embraced ± there are enough variables that you cannot control without going out of your way to create some more. Put a man with Aidan O'Brien's talent into this environment, and it is hardly surprising that it bursts with success. O'Brien's affinity with horses is world-renowned, but the operation could not possibly work as well as it does if he did not also have an affinity with people. When you hear O'Brien interviewed by the media after a big race win, you invariably hear talk of the team of people who worked so hard to make it happen. You might be forgiven for thinking that this was just an effort to deflect attention away from himself, or a hat-tilt towards modesty, but if you did, you would be wrong. Make no mistake, this is a team game, and every member is integral to its success, from the lad who tells Aidan that he thinks his horse will want a trip to the girl who cuts her lunch break short because she has just thought of something that might work on an injury. Calling each rider by his or her first name is definitely intentional. Each member of staff seems to have a huge sense of ownership that is quite deliberately and noticeably nurtured, and which only comes with the granting of responsibility. The team spirit that O'Brien has created is palpable. Focus on the individual to benefit the collective. Motivation is not an issue. We wait in the indoor school and watch as fourth lot come in, all two-year-olds, almost all without a name yet. A Montjeu, a Galileo, a Sadler's Wells, a half-brother to Alexandrova. You marvel as O'Brien names them at how he can recognise every one of them. A teacher with a classroom full of students, each one a member of the same class ± junior infants here ± yet each an individual and treated as such. ªThis is all I do,º says O'Brien simply. ªI'm with these horses every day. They're as distinct as humans to me, you recognise each of them like you'd recognise a person.º ***** It is October 1994, Dr Vincent O'Brien has just announced his retirement from training, and speculation about who will succeed him at Ballydoyle is rife. Vincent's son Charles is thought to be the early front-runner, but it soon becomes apparent that Charles is happy to stay at his current base at Rathbride on The Curragh. After that, Aidan O'Brien ± no relation ± is the only man who is ever really mentioned. From a farming and point-to-pointing background, the Wexford lad left school after fifth year and got a job driving a forklift truck at the Waterford Co-op. Always a keen horseman, he got his first job in racing with Curragh trainer PJ Finn when he was 18. When that yard closed down a couple of months later, he moved to Jim Bolger's. When he left Bolger's three years later, Christy Roche, then Bolger's stable jockey, said that O'Brien was the only employee whom Bolger was ever sorry to see leave. Last year, in 1993, O'Brien took over the training licence from his wife Anne Marie Crowley ± whom he met as they circled before the start of a Galway bumper ± daughter of Joe Crowley, herself an accomplished horsewoman and champion National Hunt trainer in 1992/93, the first lady to land the title. Aidan has just landed his first trainers' title in 1993/94, and has been crowned champion amateur rider to boot. It is only October, and already he has burst through the 100-winner barrier for the calendar year, one of only four Irish trainers to have done so. He decides to tone down the riding in order that he can concentrate on training. We don't know it at the time, but it will turn out to be an astute decision, as he will go on to be crowned champion National Hunt trainer for each of the subsequent five seasons. The talk is of the similarities between Vincent and Aidan, both ahead of their time, both with an innate understanding of horses, both record-breakers in the National Hunt sphere. But there are doubts. Success with National Hunt horses and inexpensive flat horses in run of the mill contests does not necessarily guarantee success at the very highest level of the business of flat racing. Although Aidan has trained 136 winners this year so far, 91 of those have been in National Hunt races, and he has only just won his first group race. Just because the living legend that is Vincent O'Brien can train Grand National and Champion Hurdle and Gold Cup winners, then go on to land 44 Classics, including six Epsom Derbies and six Irish Derbies, it does not mean that success in one sphere automatically begets success in the other. The Michael Dickinson Manton experience is still relatively fresh in people's minds. Dickinson was a genius with National Hunt horses, one of the leading trainers of the late 1970s and early 1980s. He trained the first five home in the 1983 Cheltenham Gold Cup, a feat that will probably never be bettered or even equalled. In 1984 he moved into the state of the art training establishment that was Manton to train for Robert Sangster and, for various reasons, abjectly failed to deliver. He lasted barely a season. Nevertheless, rumours about Aidan O'Brien's future at Ballydoyle are circulating around Goffs at the yearling sales even before Vincent's retirement is official, no doubt fuelled by Aidan's purchase of a Sadler's Wells filly for 275,000 guineas, a price tag that is not consistent with his purchasing policy hitherto. Suggestions that the yearling is for a new client associated with Coolmore Stud are confirmed, and soon afterwards the news seeps out. O'Brien's National Hunt horses will remain at his base at Piltown, just beneath Carriganog Hill, but his flat horses will move to Ballydoyle, and some of those horses will be owned by John Magnier and his associates. If all this seems like a long time ago now, that's because it is. Aidan O'Brien was just a week off his 25th birthday, son Joseph, now aspirant jockey Joseph, was well shy of his first, and his three full-siblings had not even been considered.