If Piz Badile wins Saturday’s Cazoo Epsom Derby, Donnacha O’Brien will become the youngest trainer ever to win flat racing’s most coveted prize. It could also supply a sense of history repeating itself.
The 1984 Derby supplied perhaps the most unlikely upset of all in the great classic’s 242-year catalogue of triumph and disaster. When the raging unbeaten favourite El Gran Senor ranged up under a motionless Pat Eddery with two furlongs to go, a seventh Derby victory seemed inevitable for the colt’s legendary trainer Vincent O’Brien.
Even on replay 38 years later, that El Gran Senor gets run down in the dying strides by Secreto still seems remarkable: that it was O’Brien’s son David who saddled the winner all but beggars belief.
David O’Brien was 27 when he denied his father the crowning success to a seminal career. A few years later the precocious but shy figure stunned racing by leaving for a life in the wine industry. He remains the youngest ever Derby-winning trainer, at least for now.
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There is no getting away from the uncanny echoes of that tale latent to this 243rd Derby. Having assumed the role of Master of Ballydoyle in 1996, Aidan O’Brien has rewritten racing’s record books to stunning effect.
It includes an unequalled eight wins in what remains the most coveted prize of all. One more will see him equal the late Lester Piggott’s benchmark haul. O’Brien’s trio of contenders are led by the second-favourite Stone Age while Changingoftheguard and Star Of India are no back numbers.
Ranged against the Ballydoyle hopes are the favourite Desert Crown as well as contenders from racing’s other superpower organisations, Godolphin and Juddmonte. It makes for a classic cast although one that contains an unlikely combination towards the top of the betting.
Racing’s most famous jockey, Frankie Dettori, will be legged onto Piz Badile by a 23-year-old training for just over two seasons and with less than 50 winners in all under his belt. This being Donnacha O’Brien, though, we’re hardly talking your typical ‘Zoomer’.
The youngest of Aidan O’Brien’s four children has already crammed more into his career with horses than most do in a lifetime. A five-year career span as a rider contained a pair of champion jockey titles and classic successes in both Ireland and England.
It’s a haul that included riding his brother Joseph’s hope Latrobe to Irish Derby glory in 2018. A few weeks before that O’Brien had ridden his father’s Forever Together to land the Oaks at Epsom. Prior to that he was on board Saxon Warrior to win the English 2,000 Guineas. A year later Magna Grecia did the same. But by the end of 2019 the reigning champion jockey had had enough.
The reason had nothing to do with any dilettante instinct from a privileged scion of racing royalty. With little or nothing to spare from six foot in height, the demands of making weight at just under nine stone always made riding a short-term career move. That he stretched it to five years was a minor miracle of willpower in itself.
Like his older brother Joseph, riding was always a precursor to training. Unlike his brother though, whose massive operation in Piltown contains horses of all standards over jumps and on the flat, the youngest O’Brien has opted to concentrate on quality over quantity.
His big race touch extended to classic glory almost immediately when Fancy Blue landed the 2020 French Oaks just months into his new career. If that was a spectacular start the prospect of Derby success is at another level again.
“The Epsom Derby is the pinnacle of flat racing so long term that would be the goal,” O’Brien said when he began training.
By any standards of precocity – even those of an 18-year-old Piggott winning the Derby – to make it to Epsom with a realistic shot so soon is remarkable. The automatic qualification that comes with such a feat is O’Brien’s privileged background.
In a sport where opportunity counts for so much, whispers of nepotism are inevitable. As riders and trainers, the O’Brien brothers have enjoyed circumstances most can only dream of. Both can argue such chances would dry up if not availed of but it’s still a delicate line to walk in perception terms.
Asked immediately after his Oaks win on Forever Together what his best strengths were, the teenager jockey’s response was immediate – “I’m Aidan O’Brien’s son!”
It was a level of self-awareness that surprised few who have tracked O’Brien’s meteoric career to date. Unlike his father’s public face of impeccable if ultra-guarded civility, O’Brien can cut an appealingly wry figure when interviewed. He is aware of popular fascination with his family background and the singular hold they have on the sport.
“We all get on very well. People ask this the whole time, wanting to find out that secretly we hate other,” he has said. “Unfortunately, we get on very well and bounce things off each other the whole time.”
Nevertheless, with such a profile comes unavoidable scrutiny that perhaps makes a certain guardedness not only unavoidable but necessary.
“Donnacha is a very hard guy to get a read on,” said one racing insider this week, preferring to remain anonymous.
“He keeps himself to himself. I doubt there are many who could give you an informed opinion on him, personally. He’s courteous and polite but aloof. Actually, Joseph seems a more interactive sort of personality,” they added.
O’Brien is based at a yard near Cashel where David Wachman used to train. Piz Badile’s Ballysax Stakes defeat of Joseph’s Buckaroo two months ago has been the highlight of a relatively frustrating season to date although it is one which could take the ultimate upswing come 4.30pm on Saturday afternoon.
As a rider, O’Brien’s best Derby chance came when Broome was fourth to his stable companion Anthony Van Dyck in 2019.
Piz Badile, named after an Alpine peak, was impressive enough in the Ballysax to have his owners, the Niarchos family’s Flaxman Stables, hunt Dettori’s services weeks ago and for the Italian to happily accept the ride.
If it is a tough break for champion apprentice Gavin Ryan, who had ridden the colt in his three career starts to date, then Dettori’s Epsom experience could prove valuable around what is still the ultimate test of a young thoroughbred.
Once again O’Brien finds himself in a position most others of his age can only envy. However, one bloodstock expert points to Piz Badile’s relatively undistinguished pedigree as evidence of how presumptions of a silver platter can be misguided.
“A lot of what Donnacha trains looks great on paper,” they said. “But I suppose there’s a reason why they are there and not in Ballydoyle.”
On Saturday father and son will go head-to-head in the biggest race of the year with no quarter given, similar perhaps to 1984 when a different family of O’Brien’s ultimately had to contend with a maelstrom of emotions.
“Losing trainer, winning father,” ITV’s Brough Scott summed up when interviewing Vincent O’Brien afterwards.
As historic recurrences go the prospect of a Derby repeat today is one Aidan O’Brien is unlikely to mind too much at all.
