THE MAN WHO MADE THE DERBY: How appropriate it is that Vincent O'Brien's fingerprints are all over this year's race, writes Brian O'Connor
BEFORE THE 1977 Epsom Derby, Vincent O’Brien famously stuffed The Minstrel’s ears with cotton wool to prevent him boiling over with nerves during the preliminaries. But there isn’t enough cotton wool in the world to drown out the resonance of the master-trainer’s influence on what is going to happen at Epsom today.
Thirty-two years ago, The Minstrel and his aurally-challenged ears had to walk to the start across the famous downs, through a heaving tide of people including some politically incorrect gypsies encouraging Lester Piggott to “give him a good whipping”. These days the runners canter down the track to the start in reverse, but Epsom’s challenge remains resolutely the same, the ultimate for horse and jockey.
This afternoon, the jockeys will wear black armbands, and as they wind their way down to the gates a short tribute will be read out to a man whose legacy on what is going to happen at 3.45pm is as profound as the sense of loss felt by an entire industry when Michael Vincent O’Brien died on Monday.
Reaching 92 years of age means no one can say that perhaps the most significant figure ever produced by Irish sport didn’t have a good innings. But there will still be great sadness at losing a man who was at the Derby only 12 months ago to greet the big-race jockeys as they entered the parade ring. O’Brien watched New Approach win and become the 14th horse trained in Ireland to land the world’s most famous classic.
However, only a year later the Derby provides an unprecedented level of Irish domination. Eight of the 12 colts are trained here. The shortest-priced of the home team is a 20 to shot. An Irish clean sweep isn’t so much hoped for as expected.
How appropriate is it then that Vincent O’Brien’s fingerprints are all over the race.
Other trainers may have won the Derby on seven occasions – Robert Robson, John Porter and Fred Darling – but O’Brien’s six victories are the template for the modern era.
But statistics don’t come even close to illustrating how incredibly unlikely such a phenomenal record is.
Sir Peter O’Sullevan, who for years combined BBC commentary duties with getting on bets for his old friend, captured that best this week when he described the idea of training classic winners from south Tipperary as akin to an Englishman wanting to train in Cornwall.
It just wasn’t done. High-class jumpers might have come out of the south of Ireland in the 1950s, but not any beast worthy of taking on flat racing’s elite. When O’Brien forked out £17,000 for 285 acres near the village of Rosegreen in 1950, his vision for Ballydoyle was only exceeded by an ambition to take on the world.
What he produced on the ground at Ballydoyle is a centre for the craft of producing high-class racehorses unparalleled in the world. In fact, Nijinsky, Roberto and plenty other champions may never have come close to capitalising on their potential if trained anywhere else.
But the influence of all that success also produced an overall broadening of horizons and an injection of self-confidence whose influence is manifest today.
Jim Bolger has been at the peak of the training profession for three decades now and tries to add to New Approach’s victory today with Gan Amhras. His racing ambition was kindled as a young man by tracking O’Brien around yearling sales, resolutely looking for patterns in terms of what type of horses were being considered and dismissed.
If ever a horse’s name can be associated with its trainer, it is Gan Amhras. But even Bolger’s self-confidence can only have been boosted by the knowledge that another Irishman had already proved that initiative and talent could pay off on their own terms on a world stage.
Ballydoyle’s continuing influence on the Derby is obvious enough. Aidan O’Brien runs six horses today. Remarkably, that’s two fewer than in 2007. However, that strength-in-depth captures the continuing belief in Coolmore, the breeding empire set up by O’Brien and his son-in-law, John Magnier, in the 1970s, that the Derby remains relevant.
Doubters still maintain that commercial breeding realities make a mile-and-a-half race something of an anachronism in the modern world.
Magnier remains the world’s most powerful breeder, and a famously unsentimental businessman, yet he continues to enthusiastically quote the great Italian horseman Federico Tessio about the thoroughbred only existing because of the Epsom Derby finishing post.
On Monday, Aidan O’Brien greeted the news of his predecessor’s death with genuine sadness, but also expressed his gratitude for the legacy of where he now works.
“I feel a sense of history every morning when I walk into the yard that has had horses such as Nijinsky, Sir Ivor and Sadler’s Wells. It is humbling,” Ireland’s champion trainer said.
O’Brien added that his namesake was a hero to him growing up. He still remembers watching on television Sadler’s Wells and Pat Eddery winning the 1984 Irish Champion Stakes at Phoenix Park. The Northern Dancer colt raced with his head held high, but no one could doubt his courage.
That Northern Dancer was the font of so much success at Ballydoyle in the 1970s and 1980s is perhaps the surest example of how Vincent O’Brien’s eye for a horse, combined with a commercial nous, has transformed the global horse game.
Sadler’s Wells was spotted by O’Brien as a yearling, turned into a champion on the racecourse by him and sent to Coolmore with impeccable credentials to become an even greater success on the course. Instead, he became a legend in the breeding shed, a multiple leading sire whose impact on European racing is unrivalled in the last 50 years.
It’s amusing now to remember how, prior to Galileo’s runaway victory in 2001, conventional wisdom was starting to gather about how a son of Sadler’s Wells couldn’t win the Epsom Derby. Twelve months later, High Chaparral rubbed in the futility of that line of thinking even further.
Today the now retired Sadler’s Wells has two sons running for him, Masterofthehorse, and High Chaparral’s full-brother, Black Bear Island. High Chaparral himself is the sire of the Chester Vase-winner Golden Sword.
But it is Coolmore’s two outstanding stallion sons of Sadler’s Wells who dominate.
Montjeu is responsible for Montaff, but especially Fame And Glory, who brings an unbeaten record to the job of attempting to follow in the footsteps of other sons of Montjeu, Motivator (2005) and Authorized (2005).
But it is Galileo – sire of New Approach – who is currently the world’s hottest stallion property. As well as Gan Amhras, the heir apparent to Sadler’s Wells also has Rip Van Winkle, Age Of Aquarius and Kite Wood running for him. The Derby favourite, Sea The Stars, is a half-brother to Galileo.
Two other runners in today’s classic aren’t by Coolmore stallions, but Crowded House is out of a mare by Woodman, a horse trained by O’Brien in the mid-1980s whose promising racing career was disrupted by illness.
The irony of the Sadler’s Wells legend is that, in his classic year in 1984, he wasn’t even the best colt in Ballydoyle. That honour undoubtedly fell to El Gran Senor, whose Epsom defeat by Secreto remains one of the most dramatic Derby renewals.
Vincent O’Brien also finished a Derby runner-up with Cavo Doro (1973) and Law Society (1985), but the emotional roller-coaster of 1984 must have been bewildering. To see a horse he believed to be as good if not better than any he had ever handled up to then getting beaten a short head must have been bad enough. To be nosed out by a horse trained by his son, David, provoked a cocktail of bitter disappointment and colossal parental pride.
It all adds up to an incredible legacy to a race that embodies the importance of tradition in racing more than any other. An essential truth of the sport is that the most important race of all is the next one. And yet anyone who dismisses Derby history as bunk clearly doesn’t understand what just over two-and-a-half minutes on an undulating piece of Surrey means every year.
The Derby remains the most coveted race of all because its 229 years of tradition has defined the entire sport. From Diomed in 1780 to New Approach, it boasts the most illustrious roll-of-honour. Some not-so-great horses have won it, too, but what’s so alluring about the start of each June is the thought of one of the real deals confirming his class on the stage which matters most.
Vincent O’Brien realised that and conjured, in his inimitable way, a series of memories that will live on as long as the idea of one horse passing a little red lollipop in front of another continues to fascinate people.
Sea The Stars or Rip Van Winkle or something else may yet become the real deal. But what is certain is that the complexion of today’s race would be very different indeed without one man’s influence.
