When Vincent O'Brien travelled with seven horses to the 1975 Royal Ascot festival, various shivers ran down various bookmakers backs. With good reason, too, because six of them won. It was possibly the greatest Royal Ascot training performance since the second World War, but with a total of 112 winners since 1946, Irish trainers have always made their presence felt at this most English of occasions.
O'Brien was already a legend by 1975, with 10 Royal victories already in the bag. Ultimately, he wound his career up with a total of 25.
Compared to that, his successor at Ballydoyle, Aidan O'Brien, has barely got off the ground. Harbour Master's Coventry Stakes two years ago is his sole victory so far, but with a potentially explosive team of 12 representing him this week, bookmakers can be forgiven for shifting uneasily. Some memories last long in this game.
Not that O'Brien will ever be guilty of approaching any meeting, never mind Royal Ascot, with a "the rest of 'em are bums and are running for second" mentality.
Yesterday he was in typically careful form, answering the question of what will be a good Ascot '99 for Ballydoyle with the sort of straight bat that the England cricket management would kill for.
"If you have a winner at Ascot, it's been a good Ascot," he said. "It's a big meeting with good, competitive racing. It can get pretty intense out there."
In truth, the next four days could be a Ballydoyle benchmark for the rest of the season. Three-year-olds like Orpen and Lavery are on retrieval missions after failing to grab classic glory, and Group glory here will do wonders for their reputations. But it's in the two-year-old ranks that the future lies. Sixteen individual O'Brien-trained two-year-olds have already won this season. In Irish terms it has been an awesome display of dominance, but the millions put into the Ballydoyle operation by John Magnier and Michael Tabor are invested on wider hopes.
Five juveniles will travel to Ascot, headed by Fasliyev in today's Coventry Stakes, and a lot is riding on them. Confronted by the best of their age group in Britain, will this apparent world-beating crop continue their dominance.
"They look a really nice bunch of horses at home but this will be a good test for them," O'Brien admitted. Pass the test and those battalions of regally-bred bullets waiting to be fired back in Co Tipperary will seem all the more potent. Fail the test and some doubts will set in, not least among the other Irish trainers whose horses have mostly not come within a donkey's screech of O'Brien's bluebloods so far.
Considering the stakes, O'Brien was impressively phlegmatic yesterday, but then the Nureyev colt, Fasliyev, a winner of his two races, at Leopardstown and the Curragh, hasn't given him any reason to worry so far. "He has run twice and at this stage he looks the one most up to the Coventry. Harbour Master had also run twice before the race and he was a tough and seasoned horse. You need experience in these races. Fasliyev is a fine big horse and he should be fine on the ground. He's drawn 17, so he should have a decent run out wide," he said.
Asanovo, Warrior Queen, Bach and Rossini are the other two-year-old hopes this week, but today will also be about Orpen in the St James's Palace Stakes. Last season Orpen was the sort of two-year-old that O'Brien hopes Fasliyev et al will emerge as, but he has let himself down so far this season through fighting Michael Kinane in both the English and Irish 2,000 Guineas.
"He has been very relaxed at home since the Curragh, but he has always been very relaxed at home. He's probably been a bit fresh in his two races, although he was better at the Curragh, and I hope that has been run off him now," O'Brien said. "I have to have worries about his stamina over a mile but the good ground will help him."
Like almost all of O'Brien's runners this week, Orpen has a real enough chance of winning, and at this level, no more can be asked for.
"It's good to be able to go there and compete," was O'Brien's parting shot. The bookmakers could end up diving for cover yet again.
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