O'Brien Relishing Search for Sadler's Heir

This is the second part of a wide-ranging interview with the record-breaking master of Ballydoyle. Read the first part here.

Nothing succeeds like succession. With each year that passes, Aidan O'Brien's tenure at Ballydoyle increasingly defines an epoch on the modern Turf. And, in the process, he is able to savour a new form of fulfilment: the regeneration of brilliance, as his champions past embark on their stud careers.

Certainly, the 2012 Derby winner Camelot (GB) (Montjeu {Ire}) made a promising start with his first juveniles last year. Having stayed in training at four–a sporting decision that didn't really pay off–Camelot has the 2014 Epsom winner, Australia (GB) (Galileo {Ire}), following hard on his heels at stud. That gives O'Brien the opportunity to renew comparisons between the stock of their mighty patriarchs.

“The Camelots are very much on the stamp of Montjeu,” he says. “And the Australias look very much on the stamp of Galileo: very relaxed horses, doing everything lovely and smooth, they have great minds. Camelots are like Montjeu, they have a lot of nervous energy and we think this year we'll see the best of them. We thought they'd be back-end 2-year-olds and middle-distance 3-year-olds. That can change. But there's a lot of Montjeu in them, to train, and we think there will be to race, that's why we're so looking forward to them this year.”

“I suppose what made Camelot unusual is that it was very rare for a Montjeu to be able to win the Guineas. Galileos have always been very genuine, every single day they give you everything, and that's the way he always was. But Montjeus were highly strung, with a lot of nervous energy. And these Camelots are very like him: they're very active, very light on their feet, they handle all types of ground and can produce that bit of brilliance for a middle-distance horse.”

As O'Brien points out, that acceleration could also be seen in the grandson of Montjeu who gave him a surprise sixth success in the Derby last year, Wings Of Eagles (Fr) (Pour Moi {Ire}). It is always fascinating to hear how, being so familiar with these recurring traits, O'Brien modulates his approach accordingly: Camelot himself, for instance, being a template for his handling of the Montjeu line.

“Because Camelot would easily turn himself inside out, we didn't ask him too much,” O'Brien recalls. “He just came there very quick, in the middle of the summer, it shocked us a little bit because we wanted him really for the last quarter of the season. So after he won his maiden we stopped on him, we didn't want to put him through those 2-year-old races in the middle of the season. Even though he was a Montjeu, he wanted to do it and we didn't let him really; we didn't want to do that to him.”

“Galileos, you could run them over six furlongs and there'd not be a bother on them,” he says. “They might get beat, but it wouldn't harm them. But it maybe wouldn't be the right thing to do with a Montjeu. What makes Galileo different is that mental genuineness. That gene is so strong, it's unbelievable the way it comes through. They can be all types of physicals, but whatever's in their mind makes them so determined, so genuine. Montjeus have that other kink: they have the brilliance, but you just have to be a little bit more careful with them.”

For all the competition among sons of Galileo joining him on his own farm, none has quite made a start to match that of Frankel (GB)–famously a Coolmore foal-share-over at Juddmonte. O'Brien is intrigued by the way Frankel's sons have been carrying their speed over middle distances, and has corresponding expectations for one in his own care, Nelson (Ire). Just run out of the G2 Royal Lodge by Roaring Lion (Kitten's Joy), who subsequently ran so well against Saxon Warrior (Jpn) (Deep Impact {Jpn}) at Doncaster, Nelson is out of G1 Irish Oaks winner Moonstone (GB) (Dalakhani {Ire}). While her son US Army Ranger (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) failed to go on after finishing second in the 2016 Derby, Nelson looks an intriguing Epsom prospect himself.

“Nelson looks like he will get a mile and a half, and could get farther,” O'Brien says. “When John [Gosden]'s horse beat him at Newmarket, he was just getting going again at the line. With Frankel the stamina I imagine comes from Galileo. We had Powerscourt (GB) (Sadler's Wells) out of that pedigree [half-brother to Frankel's dam] and we felt he was best at a mile and a quarter.”

“But what makes Galileo different is that they have class as well as stamina,” he says. “Some staying horses you can get are slowish horses but keep going. But his have that ability to travel at a high cruising pace for a long time and then quicken off it. Frankel had that, he'd cruise at a very high tempo and maintain it and then go again if he had to: those were all Galileo qualities, if you saw him in his races.”

Given fast mares, on the Frankel model, Galileo has progressively proved capable of siring horses with outright sprint speed, last year producing his first elite winner at short of 7f when Clemmie (Ire) won the G1 Cheveley Park S. His one deficiency, in terms of his stock's versatility, has so far been on dirt. O'Brien has spoken memorably in the past about Galileo's discomfort when himself trying the surface, and it is an intriguing dimension of Coolmore's outcross experiments that a better fit for dirt may result.

Ballydoyle's two near-misses in the GI Breeders' Cup Classic, Giant's Causeway (Storm Cat) and Declaration Of War (War Front), both had feasible genetic antecedents. So who can say whether the influence of Sunday Silence, as grandsire, may yet enable Deep Impact–now looking such a promising outcross for Coolmore–to bring Galileo mares across? In the meantime, of course, the stable has a new dirt monster in Mendelssohn (Scat Daddy), such a spectacular winner of the G2 UAE Derby.

O'Brien knows that he will not be restrained by any want of adventure in his patrons. “We're lucky that the lads aren't frightened to have a go at things, to take a chance,” he says. “Because they're very conscious that those pedigrees need to be knitted back together. Which is vital, for everyone.”

“When you go on the dirt, you do need a very hard mind; and a lot of natural pace, a kind of coarse pace,” says O'Brien. “You know, it's a different thing: it's rugged, tough, where often the grass horses can be milder in their mentality, and kinder. But listen, it's all a changing environment as you go along, dipping you toe in and out.”

Should O'Brien happen to go on and win a GI Kentucky Derby, or a Breeders' Cup Classic, it should be pretty obvious to everyone–by this stage of his career–just why that could be. For the key to this man is that his humility is every bit as unrelenting as his achievement. So often, high achievers in sport are driven by an egotistical thirst to dominate their peers. Perhaps, among horsemen at any rate, personalities of that type would actually achieve more if clearing their decks of vanity in the same way.

It is telling that O'Brien's principal satisfaction, when Saxon Warrior took him past Bobby Frankel's record at Doncaster, was simply to have his daughter Ana present. She had been seriously injured in a terrifying race fall in Killarney back in July.

“That was the greatest thing about the day,” he says. “We knew we could go to the end of the year without winning another Group 1, everyone was very conscious of that. But the only thing that mattered was that Ana said she wanted to go racing. For the horse then to win, on top of that, was great–but to have Ana there, that was the most unbelievable thing of all.”

“Ana had so many things she had to pass through, to say she was going to be okay,” he recalls. “The reality of life is that all the stuff we're doing and talking about, every day, it's only stuff. None of it matters. Money, work, everything's stuff. It makes no difference whatsoever, winning or losing, when we're just so lucky to get through days like that [at Killarney].”

For the rest, he sets himself the same standards as he does his children, or his horses. Whatever hand they have all been dealt by nature, all you can do is be conscientious about the nurture–and then only day by day. Records? They can take care of themselves.

“All we think of is doing our best,” he stresses. “I promise we don't ever think of anything like that. You just try and make the decision you think right on the day. You might look back and say: 'I shouldn't have done that.' But all you can do, on the day, is make the decision you think best there and then.”

“It's all the same, horses and people,” he notes. “You've all the families, some have the same traits but because the gene pool is so massive they won't all have the same genes. Then the environment they were in, up along, mightn't be the same. So they might have had different experiences that either shut genes or kick them off.”

“With horses, you're trying to switch on genes that aren't switched on; and maybe shut down the ones that aren't in the right place,” says O'Brien. “It's a very fine line, really. Everything depends on the character and the mentality of those horses. Like human beings, they're all made up of different things. Every single one of them is different. And there's no law.”

So there's the secret: that there is no one secret. Yes, those priceless Coolmore pedigrees give him a palette of vivid paints; but the trainer treats each horse as a blank canvas. And that's what makes springtime so special. “This time of year, anything is possible,” O'Brien says lightly. “Anything.”