Ger Lyons© Photo Healy Racing
Aidan O’Brien needs only two more winners to achieve a haul of 50 Royal Ascot victories, a notable tally in every sense, even more so for a trainer based in Ireland, and especially so considering the first of them, Harbour Master’s Coventry Stakes, came in 1997. At this rate even Sir Henry Cecil’s record of 75 winners will be under threat. O’Brien’s 2016 Royal Ascot story however is going to be inextricably linked with his son. Plenty believe it will be the start of a much longer-term narrative.
It is already a remarkable family tale now that Joseph O’Brien is formally among the trainer ranks, the scene set for father and son to battle it out at a meeting where the stakes are huge and sentiment gets left at the start.
Such dynastic tales are of course nothing new in Irish racing, with generations continuing to exert their influence through the decades.
From Jack Rogers a century ago through to his grandson Mick Rogers, trainer of the Epsom Derby winners, Hard Ridden and Santa Claus: Paddy ‘Darkie’ Prendergast and his extended family, perhaps most notably of all over jumps, the Mullins’. Both Dermot Weld and John Oxx have continued family traditions of training horses at the Curragh.
What’s notable about this however are the continuing parallels between the current master of Ballydoyle and his predecessor, the legendary figure who created the world’s most famous racing yard and remains acclaimed as the nearest thing to visionary genius the sport and industry has ever seen.
Vincent O’Brien’s hegemony stretched well into the 1980’s and overlapped with the brief but brilliant training career of his son David. That it should culminate in that never-to-be-forgotten Epsom Derby epic with Secreto trumping El Gran Senor - the colt billed beforehand as the best the old master had ever put through his hands - was one of those quirks of fate that racing seems to specialise in.
That just four years later David O’Brien turned his back on racing, aged just 31, remains one of those tantalising “what might have been” stories that are another racing speciality. Less than a decade later, it was Aidan O’Brien who began rejuvenating the Ballydoyle legend, rewriting the record books and, by the by, rearing a family that looks to have as much dynastic potential as anything ever seen in racing before.
Joseph O’Brien’s spectacular start to training under his own name was just confirmation in many people’s eyes that here is a figure with the potential to exert an equivalent level of dominance in future that his father currently holds. Clearly knowledgeable, and blessed with the sort of facilities and owner list that most young trainers can only dream about, it will be fascinating to examine his progress over the coming years.
Some will tell you it is already a done deal that O’Brien Jnr will one day succeed his father at Ballydoyle. Such presumption often gets punished in a game where so much can change so quickly. Nobody for instance could have forecast David O’Brien walking away at 31. It must be odds-on though that this is one dynastic tale which is set to run and run.
The first major Ballydoyle card likely to be played this week will be Caravaggio in the Coventry but you sense he will have to be every bit as exceptional as he’s supposed to be in order to get the better of the wonderfully named Psychedelic Funk, the latest star product off the Ger Lyons juvenile assembly line.
Lyons’ continuing rise through the training ranks is one of racing’s most remarkable success stories in the last decade. Maybe because it includes just a single Group 1 success, and a single Royal Ascot victory nine years ago, the achievement in securing a place among the top five in the championship with comparatively limited resources - and all of it based on the trainer’s own judgement — gets overlooked. Considering the competition here that is grossly unfair.
Maybe that’s because Lyons isn’t particularly interested in whether you like him or not. He was described to me recently as a turbulent priest, one of those rare creatures prepared to look around within their own tent and point out what is often blatantly obvious even if it isn’t politic to do so. Lyons has an opinion, doesn’t swallow the PR line about how everything in Irish racing is wonderful in its own way, and is prepared to say so.
If that makes him a turbulent priest, then it might just be the greatest compliment he’ll ever get. Racing needs a damn sight more troublesome clerics and a lot less blowhards priding themselves on being straight-shooters who in fact often only open their mouths when it is convenient to disengage from the influential posterior their lips are otherwise clinging to. Turbulent priests should be cherished; without them all that’s often left is smug complacency.
The appointment of Dr Lynn Hillyer as the Turf Club’s chief veterinary officer and the new head of the anti-doping unit caught many by surprise, leaving them to brush up on a CV that includes working for the BHA for the last dozen years, and being the European representative on the Executive for the International Group of Specialist Racing Veterinarians.
All told, the word is Dr Hillyer is the epitome of both personal and professional integrity and those asking why then is she going to work for the Turf Club should be ashamed of themselves!
As well as knowledge of her subject though, she should also bring an outside eye, free of the various agendas, many of which appear determined to reduce the fight on doping to a mere exercise in PR cosmetics. In terms of countering that perception alone, Hillyer’s appointment is encouraging. If she ultimately emerges as the sort of turbulent doctor the bloodstock game desperately requires then prayers of thanks will be offered up.
And finally, do yourself a favour ahead of the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes, take a peep on ‘Youtube’ at the Japanese horse A Shin Hikari winning the Prix d’Ispahan and try not to agree with the French commentator exclaiming ‘Whoooo!” If Time Test is the danger on Wednesday, as bookmakers believe, it’s hard not to think there’s no danger at all.
