Aidan O’Brien has joined the QIPCO Hall of Fame, becoming the first induction for 2024. With a career spanning back to 1993, when he saddled winner, Desert King, on his first day as a trainer, to today, he is regarded as one of the most successful racehorse trainers of all time.
Born in 1969, O’Brien is one of six children and comes from a farming family in County Wexford where his father also trained racehorses. O’Brien and his wife, Anne-Marie, had four children who have all grown to become jockeys. Joseph and Donnacha are considered the most successful of the siblings.
Since his career began, he has had over 4,000 career wins, 300+ Group 1 winners, 40+ British Classic Winners and six British Champion Trainer titles. In 2023, he became the most successful trainer at Royal Ascot with his 83rd win via Paddington in the St James Palace Stakes.
Galieo, Yeats, Paddington, Rock of Gibraltar and Istabraq are considered only a handful of O’Briens most successful racehorses of all time. In 2023, Auguste Rodin won the Irish trainer over 1.9 million euros during one race over the weekend’s Breeders’ cup meet, while others including Ryan Moore helped him tally that amount to over 3.1million. A rather successful outing!
O’Brien’s racing stables, which is an arm of Coolmore Stud, is located in County Tipperary. Once the humble ground of his father, Vincent, O’Brien has developed the stables into what many regard as the finest training establishment in the world.
Feature image: By monkeywing – Flickr: Father and son walking the course, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20124417
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