Grab a copy of tomorrow's New Zealand Herald for your Melbourne Cup sweepstake chart
KEY POINTS:
The world's most successful racehorse trainer is a modest, gracious, intensely devoted, single-minded, workaholic 38-year-old who looks like Harry Potter.
Aidan O'Brien, a farmer's son from County Wexford in Ireland, whose first real job was in a warehouse, may not only be the most successful trainer on the
planet, he is probably the best.
Within a couple of hours of landing in Melbourne last week, the young man who runs Ireland's most famous training establishment showed why.
In the two days before he made his first public utterance in Australia, O'Brien had endured the death of one of his favourite horses and saw his stable star Dylan Thomas robbed of his chance in the Breeders' Cup in the United States by a bog track.
As he was due to get on the plane to come to Australia, he learned his top Melbourne Cup hope, Scorpion, had hurt his leg and wouldn't be running. Not to worry.
"Well lads, it's been a tough couple of days," O'Brien told the media horde that confronted him in Melbourne on his arrival.
"What day is it?"
He then proceeded to detail the injury to his cup topweight Scorpion, he chatted about poor George Washington who had just died in the US and he outlined plans for his surviving cup runner Mahler.
"We'll just see how he looks and I'll know what way we're going in the morning," O'Brien said.
When morning came, the methods of the great trainer went on display.
And one of his secrets: To train a good horse, you need a good car.
As Mahler walked on to the Sandown track his trainer arrived through another gate in the back seat of a smart new four-wheel drive.
Said Irish racing commentator Tony O'Hehir: "This is how he does it at Ballydoyle."
As the car drew alongside Mahler, the Harry Potter face appeared at the window.
When Mahler came to the end of his canter, O'Brien had a short chat with his rider Richella Carroll and away they went again.
Mahler at the canter, and the jeep at 35km/h. Just as they do at home in Tipperary.
"We're lucky enough that we have the facility at home that we can drive and be with the horses all the time," O'Brien said later.
"You can be right upsides them and see exactly what they are doing.
"You're in constant communication with the rider so all the little decisions that you can change, you can change it every second."
On his return from stalking his horse, O'Brien explained that he'd noticed a couple of things about Mahler that needed attention.
He had sweated too much, and he'd seemed anxious.
O'Brien had come up with a few ideas to get Mahler on the right track for Tuesday.
First of all, a haircut.
"We'll clip him this evening, that will be for the sweating," he said.
"And we'll change a few things with his canter to help him relax."
He also made another subtle change to the routine.
Not totally satisfied with the chauffeur he'd been provided with to tail Mahler, the passenger became the driver.
With his winter coat removed and the young master back in charge, Mahler was a happier horse.
For his next workout, O'Brien invited cup jockey Stephen Baster to join him in the car.
"It was very important to have him here this morning," O'Brien said.
"He could see what we were doing and how we were thinking."
Mahler obliged by working happily and well, and his trainer began planning the next step and the one after.
For O'Brien, the Melbourne Cup hardly registered until a year ago, mainly because he was too busy winning the very best races in the world.
O'Brien was introduced to racing on the family farm in Clonroche in Wexford where his father kept a small team of hurdlers and steeplechasers.
At 16, the son had taken over the team, but limited opportunity at home led him to the stable of Jim Bolger where he became assistant trainer.
After three years in that job he became assistant to his wife Anne-Marie who had taken over the licence of her father Joe Crowley at the start of the 1991 season.
Anne-Marie became Ireland's first woman champion trainer, landing the national hunt title in 1992-93.
The next year she handed the ticket to her new husband who, at the age of 23, led in a winner on his first day as a trainer.
In the same season, O'Brien became Ireland's champion amateur rider over the jumps.
For the next five seasons he was Ireland champion jumps trainer and won the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham three years in succession with his first topline horse, Istabraq.
O'Brien's journey to the top of the training world began in 1996 when he took over from the legendary Dr Vincent O'Brien (no relation) at Ballydoyle in 1996.
With the backing of John Magnier and Michael Tabor of the Coolmore Stud group he was runner-up in the Irish trainers' championship in his first year at Ballydoyle.
He won the flat racing title in 1997, was third in 1998 and has won it every year since.
His success is assisted by the vast financial power of Coolmore, but the man his staff simply call "himself" has as much to do with it as the cash.
Genuine success in racing is measured by the number of Group One races you win. In 10 years at Ballydoyle, O'Brien has collected 111 of them.
But he's done more than that.
As much as his job requires him to produce winners, he must also make stallions out of his racehorses.
That he has done with an uncanny efficiency.
O'Brien's best racehorses have invariably become the best in the next stage of their careers.
Horses like Rock Of Gibraltar who won seven group one races in succession, Galileo who won the English and Irish Derbys, Desert King, O'Brien's first Group One winner and Montjeu.
This year Coolmore is standing more than 20 horses.
Next year the list might include a Melbourne Cup winner.
If it doesn't, the Master of Ballydoyle will work out why.
- AAP
