Donnacha O’Brien

Transition from jockey to trainer? Not easy. They are different disciplines, different lifestyles.

“When you’re riding, you’re in a bubble,” says Donnacha O’Brien. “You’re in the weigh room with your mates, you go out and ride your horses, you get into your car and go home. I was very lucky, the horses I was riding, the opportunities that I had, and there was a physical aspect to it of course, and a mental aspect to it. But you don’t have the depth of responsibility that you have as a trainer. When you are training, it’s full on. Twenty-four seven.”

Asked once at the peak of his riding career what his main strengths were as a jockey, he said: being Aidan O’Brien’s son. It was typically self-deprecating, but it wasn’t true. He had all the attributes as a rider that top-class jockeys possess and, tactically, there wasn’t a more astute rider in the weigh room. 

The proof is in the evidence. If he hadn’t been up to the task, he wouldn’t have been presented with the opportunities with which he was presented. There was too much at stake. Those Group 1 horses in those Group 1 races, the difference between victory and defeat was too great for the owners to be entrusting the job to a rider who wasn’t capable of doing it. 

Like in May 2018, when Ryan Moore was in Churchill Downs riding Mendelssohn in the Kentucky Derby, nobody else was ever going to ride Saxon Warrior in the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket. Donnacha O’Brien settled his horse nicely in mid-division and delivered him with his run on the far side, keeping on well to win well, with the Derby winner Masar behind in in third and subsequent multiple Group 1 winner Roaring Lion back in fifth.

And there was that day back at Newmarket later that year when, again, Ryan Moore was in America and Donnacha had three rides: Mohawk in the Royal Lodge Stakes, Fairyland in the Cheveley Park and Ten Sovereigns in the Middle Park, and he won on all three, rat-tat-tat, the first three races on the day, a Group 2 and two Group 1s.

Going racing as a trainer is different too. 

“I remember when I started training,” says Donnacha now. “I didn’t know what to do at the races, I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t know what to be doing with myself between races.”

His path to a career as a trainer began early though. Riding out at Ballydoyle, working with his dad and the team at Ballydoyle, he may not have even fully known it when he was younger, but there could hardly have been a more valuable apprenticeship for a future racehorse trainer.

Nature and necessity dictated. His height told you that he couldn’t be a jockey for his entire career. Not realistically. He did well to last as long as he did. Champion jockey in 2018, he could have stopped then, started training in 2019, but he gave it one more year, and he was champion again. He and Colin Keane pushed each other beyond the 100-winner mark, the first time ever that two jockeys had ridden more than 100 winners in the same Irish flat racing season.

During his final year as a jockey, he started to look after some of the horses at Ballydoyle, a couple of late-maturing three-year-olds, some two-year-olds who needed time. Fancy Blue was one of those.

He rode Fancy Blue too to victory on her racecourse debut in a Naas maiden in September 2019, and he rode against her when she won a listed race at The Curragh the following month. Then, in 2020, his first year as a trainer, the Deep Impact filly was his flagship horse.

“I was lucky that she was around then,” says her trainer. “I was so grateful to the Magnier family and the Tabor family and the Smith family for letting me train her.  We probably didn’t fully appreciate all that she achieved at the time.”

When Fancy Blue won the Prix de Diane, the French Oaks, at Chantilly in July 2020, when she battled on to get home by a short neck and a head from Alpine Star and Peaceful in an Irish-trained 1-2-3, she registered her young trainer’s first Group 1 win. And when she went to Goodwood three and a half weeks later and won the Nassau Stakes, she registered his second.

“That was Covid year, I wasn’t able to be there for either of her Group 1 wins.”

There was depth to Donnacha O’Brien’s first year as a trainer too. As well as Fancy Blue’s Group 1 wins in France and in Britain, he trained 17 winners in Ireland, and he trained Shale to win the Group 3 Silver Flash Stakes at Leopardstown and the Group 1 Moyglare Stud Stakes at The Curragh. Three Group 1 wins during his first season with a trainer’s licence.

You need to have the horses of course, but you also need a trainer who will facilitate the horses in realising their potential, who will put the structures in place that will allow them be as good as they can be. You need the players, but you also need the coach if the team is going to achieve.

“We’re very lucky to have the team of horses and the team of people here that we have. And we’re keen to grow in a way that we can manage. The key is to grow when you’re ready to grow.”

This season, Donnacha O’Brien has two Group 1 wins on the board already, both of them courtesy of Porta Fortuna. Ask him to compare the Caravaggio filly with Shale and Fancy Blue, and he takes a second to consider.

“Shale was a very good two-year-old who didn’t really make the grade at three,” he says thoughtfully. “Fancy Blue was a later-maturing filly who was very good at three.”

It’s like he’s thinking out loud.

“I would say that Porta Fortuna is as good as Shale was as a two-year-old, and she’s as good as, if not better than, Fancy Blue as a three-year-old.”

It’s high commendation, but it’s not without justification. It is a rare filly who can run twice before Royal Ascot as a juvenile, win at Royal Ascot in the early summer, then win the Cheveley Park Stakes in the autumn of her two-year-old season. And it is a rarer filly still who can then go on and win the Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot the following year as a three-year-old, and follow up by beating her elders in the Falmouth Stakes at Newmarket’s July meeting.

That requires an uncommon combination of stamina and speed, of precocity and longevity. Porta Fortuna has all of that, and the class and the attitude to go with it.

“She a lovely filly to have anything to do with,” says her trainer. “Nothing seems to faze her, she just does everything so willingly.”

All going well, Porta Fortuna’s season will funnel towards the Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar in November. Her owners are American and, second in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies’ Turf last year, they would like to go back to America and try to go one better. Between now and then, the Matron Stakes at Leopardstown in September is on her agenda, possibly preceded by a trip to France next month for the Prix Jacques le Marois.

“We were going to give her a break after Newmarket, and train her for the Matron Stakes. But she is so fresh and well in herself, she always wants to be active, so the Prix Jacques le Marois is an option. The races are nicely spaced out, same as last year. We’ll see how she goes, we’ll have a long think about it.”

Full on. Twenty-four seven.

© The Sunday Times, 21st July 2024