Aidan O’Brien is taking nothing for granted as he prepares his galaxy of stars for big-race action on both sides of the Irish Sea this weekend.
The Ballydoyle handler has enjoyed another fantastic campaign so far, with his tally of 15 Group One winners putting him one ahead of where he was at the same stage nine years ago, when he went on to set a remarkable record of 28 top-level victories in a calendar year.
By his own staggering standards, O’Brien has found Group One success a little harder to come by in recent weeks, leaving York’s Ebor Festival and the high-profile summer meetings at Deauville without managing to find the bullseye at the highest level.
The Phoenix Stakes triumph of Sun Goddess on August 9 was in fact his only Group One win over the course of last month – but with some of his biggest guns set for action over the two-day Irish Champions Festival at Leopardstown and the Curragh, and others heading to Doncaster for the St Leger meeting, it will be a major surprise if he does not increase that tally over the coming days.
“Everything leads to this weekend,” O’Brien said of two of the biggest days of the season on home soil.
“We train the horses hard for the Classics early, then we’ve Royal Ascot and the races in between, where they have to compete because we need the racing miles, but we’re not hard on them and that’s maybe why some were running well without winning – we were leaving a little bit for this weekend.
“In five, six or seven Group Ones recently we’ve finished second. That happens and maybe I was being easy on them and didn’t have the horses at a high enough pitch, thinking of this weekend coming.
“This has turned into a seriously important weekend all over the world. Obviously everybody’s eyes are on it and coming up to it we lean on the horses a little bit harder and try to get them to peak the best we can.
“It’s very competitive and very hard to win races, because everybody is doing the same thing.”
Assuming all does go according to plan this weekend, O’Brien will have that record haul of Group Ones firmly in his sights, with some major juvenile prizes at Newmarket, Champions Day at Ascot and the Breeders’ Cup and other huge races on foreign soil on the horizon.
“It’s going to be interesting, but things have to fall for you,” he continued.
“When we start to lie on them a little bit more and we get the results that we could get, then we have a chance, but we take one race at a time.
“Each Group One is so hard to win and that is why I’m always so grateful when we win and so delighted for someone else when they win.”
It is somewhat ironic that if the County Tipperary maestro does not break the record, it may be because of two of his sons.
Joseph and Donnacha O’Brien were both a huge part of the operation during their distinguished careers in the saddle, but both have now joined the training ranks themselves and have quickly established themselves as two of their father’s biggest challengers.
O’Brien senior has achieved just about everything this great game has to offer, but when detailing what keeps him motivated and driven to achieve more, it is clear his offspring act as an inspiration.
“I suppose we love what we do, myself and Anne-Marie (wife) live here now and all the lads are obviously gone,” he explained.
“Some people would get bored doing this job every day and think it would be monotonous, but we’ve always been fascinated by horses. The lads are obviously coming along behind us and are going to stamp over us very shortly! That’s a motivation to keep working.
“That’s the reality of it – we’re getting old and they’re young and they’re all coming. It’s the same with young trainers all over the world – they keep the old people doing their best!
“I know they’re a lot cleverer than we were at their age. The good thing is when they learn stuff they’re happy to tell us…for the moment!”
Despite being in one of the most high-pressure roles in the sport as the man charged with producing stallions and broodmares for the all-conquering Coolmore operation, O’Brien has always taken a philosophical approach to training.
He said: “Our thing always was we’ll do our best every minute of every day, accept whatever results we get, be grateful for it and be delighted for the people that beat us.
“When you do your best you can accept it. You make loads of mistakes, as we do every day, and because of it you get punished. But you can’t fight every fight every day and as the season goes on you have the start, the middle and the back.
“You have to compete in those races in between because horses have to keep match practice, but at the same time you can’t keep squeezing the last drop every day and because of it you often get beat.
“It’s our hobby, our interest and our passion all in one, I suppose. We don’t do anything else, we have a lot of commitments to meet and we have to get results.
“I suppose all those things drive us every day, we’re grateful and thankful for it and take one day at a time – and when it goes bad it goes down to one minute at a time!
“We’re very lucky we have unbelievable people here and we have unbelievable stock and raw material to work with – very few people anywhere in the world will have these kind of horses.”