Joseph O’Brien emulated training’s elite by completing the Epsom-Curragh Oaks double with different fillies at the weekend and could have a new record in his sights later this season.
The 33-year-old former champion jockey is on course to beat the 2018 record of his father Aidan O’Brien, who saddled 152 winners in an Irish flat season that year.
O’Brien Jnr saddled Johanna Walsh to win a first Juddmonte Irish Oaks at the Curragh on Saturday, a 77th winner of this campaign that at the midsummer point puts him on target to surpass that tally. O’Brien reached 80 for the season with hat-trick at the Curragh card on Sunday, highlighted by Trustyourinstinct’s Group Two success in the Curragh Cup.
In 2013, O’Brien rode a then record of 126 winners in a flat season, eclipsing Michael Kinane. The record stood until Colin Keane beat it five years ago in reaching 141.
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The most winners ever recorded in an Irish season remains Willie Mullins’s 257 during the 2023/24 jumps campaign.
The scope of O’Brien’s record-breaking capacity has been regularly underlined in the decade since he first took out a license, most notably perhaps when he became the youngest ever Melbourne Cup winning trainer with Rekindling in 2017. He won again with Twilight Payment three years later.
In February, O’Brien reached 1,500 career winners faster than any Irish trainer with a win for Heartbeat Supreme at Dundalk.
The satisfaction he derived from Johanna Walsh’s success was obvious though, particularly given the less than straightforward circumstances.
The spectacular Epsom Oaks winner Thundering On had been expected to start favourite but was ruled out in the morning of the race, officially “off feed”.
Champion jockey Dylan Browne McMonagle switched to Johanna Walsh, who had been a narrow second to Earth Shot in Royal Ascot’s Ribblesdale Stakes on her previous start.
The €460,000 yearling purchase, a daughter of Sea The Stars, comprehensively reversed that form as a well-supported 9/2 shot to win by four lengths from Inis Mor.
“She’s a daughter of Sea The Stars with a big pedigree and it’s a real pleasure for me to get the opportunity to train her. To have two impressive Oaks winners is hugely exciting,” said O’Brien, who added of Thundering On: “It’s a pity we didn’t get to see her but we’ll have her back for the autumn.”
O’Brien emulated his father, who also won both fillies classics in the same year with different fillies a decade earlier. Minding won at Epsom, while Seventh Heaven scored at the Curragh.
It’s an elite level accomplishment that John Gosden managed in 2019, and before that, the French maestro Andre Fabre scored with Intrepidity at Epsom and Wemyss Bight at the Curragh. Legendary British trainers Henry Cecil and Dick Hern also pulled it off in 1989 and 1980 respectively.
O’Brien had a rare reverse in France on Sunday when he saddled two horses in the three-runner Group Two Robert Papin, although neither could cope with the unbeaten local runner Tokaido.
His trainer, Amy Murphy, nominated a lucrative Sales contest at York’s Ebor meeting as a likely next start for the winning gelding before ultimately being targeted at the Breeders’ Cup.
