Aidan O’Brien reached a milestone 100 Royal Ascot winners when Scandinavia delivered a script-perfect outcome in Thursday’s Gold Cup.
It was a 10th victory for O’Brien in the historic centrepiece of British racing’s world-renowned extravaganza and a fitting stage for a landmark century that’s more statistical evidence of how he has rewritten racing’s record books.
In the 29 years since Harbour Master delivered a then fresh-faced new Ballydoyle boss a first Royal Ascot victory in the Coventry Stakes, O’Brien has redefined the old game’s parameters of success.
There have been 50 English Classics, 57 in Ireland and another 14 in France. There’s hardly a race worth mentioning in Europe that O’Brien hasn’t won at least once, and plenty other big ones around the racing world from Australia to the US.
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But throughout, it is when the racing world focuses on the rarefied action at a very English slice of Berkshire in June that the 56-year-old has mined a consistent seam of big-race success.
He has been leading trainer at Royal Ascot 13 times. It’s a decade since his most successful single week with seven winners that matched the legendary Henry Cecil. He passed out Cecil’s tally of 75 winners that year. In 2023 he passed out Michael Stoute’s total of 83.
The once seemingly unattainable 100 looked on at that point and once again O’Brien delivered.
Ryan Moore has ridden more than half of them and the English jockey timed it to perfection on Scandinavia, forcing the heavily backed 11-8 favourite’s head in front of the defending champion Trawlerman in the final strides of an epic finish.
Considering the Gold Cup was first run in 1807, the sweep of the achievement was lost on no one. That Trawlerman is trained by another of English racing’s greats, John Gosden, and owned by Godolphin, may even have sprinkled a little modern relish on the historic moment.
Sheikh Mohammed’s team have been Coolmore’s great rivals for decades. But even when O’Brien has been at his most dominant, Gosden has always been to the forefront of those taking the fight to him.
While doing so the veteran Englishman has also given fluent glimpses of the competitive nature required to compete at such elite level, bowling a few verbal googlies towards O’Brien who, unusually, has waspishly batted them back.
The man originally from Co Wexford was in more characteristic form after Scandinavia’s victory, typically deflecting praise towards his team at Ballydoyle and in Coolmore, while being firmly centre stage.
“It’s very special, it’s a very special day for myself and everybody in Ballydoyle. There are so many people involved to help a horse get this far. Ryan gave him an absolute class, peach ride.
“That’s just incredible really [100 Royal Ascot winners], it’s something that we wouldn’t dream of thinking about because for that to happen you could not believe. Even this week, it’s literally one race at a time and you don’t even think what it could be or whether it could happen because it’s so competitive, so hard to win races here,” he said.
For once it was Moore who pithily summed up his long-time ally’s likely attitude to hitting three figures. “He won’t care. He’s probably thinking of the next 100. That’s what separates him,” said the jockey
Moore requires only four more winners to reach his own Ascot century and further contributed to a memorable day for O’Brien after he got Joseph O’Brien’s Enceladus up in a fierce King George V Stakes finish. It leaves father and son tied on four winners each going into the final two days.
Already, though, it has proved to be a defining Royal Ascot for its most successful ever participant.
A week that began with a double, but also accusations of team tactics swirling around after Christophe Soumillon’s eight-day ban on an O’Brien second-string in the St James’s Palace Stakes, reached a crescendo with a Gold Cup finish for the ages.
“The crowd was very big and the cheer went up when they turned in, but when he [Scandinavia] went to the front the sound went up and the noise got louder and louder, and that’s what it’s all about,” the man of the moment said.
O’Brien’s fellow Co Tipperary trainer Fozzy Stack had earlier recorded a first ever win at the meeting after Nola Soul landed the Chesham Stakes. Like Scandinavia, Nola Soul is a son of Justify and his trainer believes he has a big future ahead of him.
“We’ll have to be thinking of Group races now and hopefully he can turn up in those good races at the end of the year,” Stack said.
Jockey James Doyle recorded a double, landing an eventful Ribblesdale Stakes on Earth Shot despite the impact of a loose horse on the race. He later scored in the Hampton Court aboard the 18-1 shot Generic who was a length too good for Endorsement.
