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Unlike his predecessor, who had a small but select bunch of horses, with the hundreds of horses going through his hands every season, he seems more and more to be using the racecourse as a training ground. Witness in recent days the miraculous improvement in form by Kitty Matcham and Savethisdanceforme, I suppose you can throw in Peeping fawn and the many maidens who are getting the hands & heels treament.
Or maybe he just hasn’t a clue how good his horses really are.I’d say Aidan is developing his own style which differs from his illustrious namesake but is not necessarily any less effective.
Quite wide of the mark.
Well Sal, can you explain away the ridiculous situation, where he had eight "no less" runners in the Derby. That to me suggests he is not too sure of the relative merits of a lot of his horses. Some years he gets a stand out colt like say King of Kings and George Washington who simply ooze class, that they hack all over the rest on the gallops.
As regards the Derby, I think the vast majority (without going into horse by horse) were relatively unexposed, and it made perfect sense to run all eight as there were several trial winners, and some promising types. I don’t think you could reasonably say all had reached their peak or limit of their potential, hence the Derby would be a good barometer as to sort out the Ballydoyle pecking order, as it’s hard to otherwise identify this, what with the huge gulf between gallops, trials and championship races. That, to me at least, doesn not constitute using a race for training purposes.
O’ Briens 2yos have always come on from their first run, but certainly over the past 2 seasons they have improved more for their first run than previous years and in general their certainly not performing as well first time out as they used to.
I would say AOB knows his horses better than anyone and they do seem to have shifted the focus more on a horses 3yo career than its 2yo career. Their running horses in back end maidens more than they used to.
Also, without stating the obvious, some horses are clearly superior to others and show this on the gallops day in day out, George Washington being an example here. Others, rarely show much at home and can only have their true potential evaluated on the racecourse.
Which of the 8 O’Brien horses didn’t deserve their place in the Derby?
Bearing in mind that 5 of them were already Group 2 winners, another was already Group 1 and Group 2 placed and another came out and ran second in the Leger.
Had they not run them all they’d be getting it in the neck on here for having all these trial winners and not running them.
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Also, without stating the obvious, some horses are clearly superior to others and show this on the gallops day in day out, George Washington being an example here. Others, rarely show much at home and can only have their true potential evaluated on the racecourse.
You forgot the third category: those dreaded morning glories *cough* Killer Instinct *cough*
With regards to the scattergun approach of Coolmore, that’s their prerogative. It certainly makes for more competitive racing (for every dodgy maiden, there’s something like the Rock of Gibraltar/Hawk Wing Guineas, for example) in general and boosts the kitty for the races in question. However, I can see where MM is coming from, in that running myriad horses in one race certainly doesn’t look that professional. If you’ve got plenty of the most expensive and finely-bred racehorses in the world to choose from, surely you must have some idea of their relative merits?
That’s why I will never rank O’Brien with the great trainers of the recent past, such as his namesake Vincent, Henry Cecil and, to a lesser extent, Michael Stoute.
Just a question for yquemi21,does he think that stoute or cecil,could of trained horses like dylan thomas,peeping fawn,Holy roman emperor, or even johanasburg and keep them on the go racing 7times in a season and still keeping theM fresh all the way through??
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Yes.
Just a question for yquemi21,does he think that stoute or cecil,could of trained horses like dylan thomas,peeping fawn,Holy roman emperor, or even johanasburg and keep them on the go racing 7times in a season and still keeping theM fresh all the way through??
A resounding YES.
AOB wouldn’t come close to Henry Cecil in his prime in my opinion. Cecil was well capable of campaigning horses at the top level throughout a whole season, just like AOB does. But whereas AOB has 54 runners in every big race, giving him a much increased chance of winning, Cecil, more often that not, did it with just the one runner.
Mike
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That’s your prerogative, newyork
I have no idea how old you are, so you may not remember the 1980s and the Racing Post database doesn’t go back that far, but Cecil, in particular, would, almost every year, have a top-class juvenile that would have five or six unbeaten races; the likes of Sanquirico, Be My Chief, High Estate, Precocious, Diesis (okay, he got turned over on his debut), Trojan Fen, etc. The fact that all of those, much like many of AP O’Brien’s juvenile stars, failed to train on at three suggests that a lot of racing isn’t necessarily good for juveniles.
I’d also suggest that the three great trainers I mentioned wouldn’t have taken four attempts to rid Peeping Fawn of her maiden tag.
I’d also suggest that the three great trainers I mentioned wouldn’t have taken four attempts to rid Peeping Fawn of her maiden tag.
Funnily enough when newyork made his point about whether Stoute could keep a horse on the go like O’Brien, I immediately thought of Pilsudski – who didn’t get off the mark till his 5th race.
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