WHEN racing fans can take their eyes off the horses, the next promissory object of veneration is a 27-year-old trainer Aidan O'Brien, who is expected to bring nine horses to this year's Cheltenham Festival, which opens next Tuesday.
At a Tipperary race track recently, I asked a horsey man how he rated O'Brien. "Sound as a pound," he said promptly.
This was a cunning understatement. O'Brien is the sensation of racing. In just three years he has pulverised all records for wins in the history of racing. Up until 1994, the record of 148 wins was held by Jim Bolger of Carlow. But in 1994 O'Brien, then 24 and in his first full year as a trainer, smashed that record with 176 winners, mostly National Hunt. The following year, O'Brien's figures resembled a demented fruit machine in action: 241 winners. This made him the champion trainer of all time in Britain and Ireland. Last year he had calmed down to 195 wins. "He just exploded on to the scene," said Don McClean, spokesman of Irish Thoroughbred Marketing.
Two O'Brien-trained horses established their credentials at Clonmel last month. What's The Verdict beat "Mouse" Morris's favoured Boss Doyle and Castle Coin knocked out the fancied Tempo, trained by Fergie Sutherland, whose Imperial Call was last year's Cheltenham Gold Cup winner.
What qualities enabled a 27-year-old to outshine the most experienced men in racing? Jim Bolger, for whom O'Brien worked for four years, doesn't have the answer: "If you ask any racehorse trainer what qualities are needed for a successful trainer, he'd sooner pick a Derby winner. You just never know until they go to do it." How soon did he spot O'Brien had a great way with horses? "Well, he didn't have a great way with horses. But at 19 he learned very quickly." He must have displayed some special quality? "He had a great work ethic. I'm not saying he worked terribly hard - I didn't see sweat on his brow very often. But he was a very thorough and responsible individual. He was wise beyond his years. He had ridden in a few point-to-points and he rode in bumpers (two-mile amateur racing) for me.
Aidan stayed with me until he was 21. Of course he now has the best facilities in the world. I've never been there. But good luck to him." Bolger was referring to the Ballydoyle stables in Co Tipperary, where perhaps the most renowned figure in the history of Irish training, Vincent O'Brien (no relation), made a world-wide reputation. Aidan O'Brien works half the day at Ballydoyle and the other half in his own stables, 30 miles away in, Kilkenny
We went to Ballydoyle to look for clues to O'Brien's success. The fresh air and exercise aspects of racing apart, one has to admit this is not among the most innocent of sports. A lot of cunning is involved in making a lot of money. An odds-on amount of misplaced cunning is also involved in losing quantities of money. Owners are secretive, trainers keep their equine cards close to their chests, jockeys have tantrums and within the trade there are wary tribes of cute hoors. When you try to gel access to this tribal world there is a certain amount of reticence and suspicion. But waving a banner with the strange device of here to interview human beings, not to interview horses" meant an initial distrust of a non-sporting journalist gradually waned.
From the road, the grounds of Ballydoyle of an afternoon are as still as a convent, with dreamy green fields (electronically fenced) and the gallops a long swathe of brown, ploughed earth but with nothing stirring now. Back up the hill are the stables and living accommodation. Here, for the first time, we come upon horses, lines of them dutifully in their boxes, their heads nodding sociably. Inside, immaculately turned-out girls and boys - jockeys and stable hands - in racing gear were draped on armchairs and sofas watching a race on television. You expected that any minute they would line up before the nodding horses and go into a high-kicking musical routine. This was not the grit, sweat and manure world of National Hunt training we expected.
We were brought to another luxuriously appointed cottage and asked to wait. A bespectacled boy was sitting on a sofa, knees tucked up, watching television. It was O'Brien. This youth had trained more than 600 winners?
It turned out that O'Brien, like many gifted people, was not very good at explaining how his talent worked. Was it hard work or an intuitive rapport with horses? Or was the famous hill, the steep, one-and-a-half-mile gallop on his own stables, Carriganog, Kilkenny, the secret of his successful training? "It all helps," O'Brien said. Then: "Every horse is different; every one has to be treated as an individual."
The short and simple annals of Aidan O'Brien began in Kilkenny where he went to the Augustinian Fathers. The priests were "very strict", although he feels they gave him a sound education in discipline. But before he got to matriculation his father fell ill. He left school, aged 17, to work on the farm with his brothers. It was no tragedy for him, since they had half a dozen horses and he always loved working with horses.
His first real job was with Gain the Waterford co-operative feed company (he is now one of its biggest customers). Eventually he entered the stables of the record-breaking Jim Bolger.
Three years later he made a momentous move. He joined Joe Crowley's stables at Carriganog. Crowley's daughter, Anne-Marie, had just won the national champion hunt training trophy. This was obviously a compatible environment and within a year he had married Anne-Marie, who is the same age as him. They immediately started having children (three to date). This meant she stayed at home - in a converted stable which they still use - while O'Brien rose before dawn to exercise the horses on the hill.
WITH domestic contentment laid on early, another factor played a crucial part in O'Brien's success. History was on his side. He happened to come into the business when it was massively expanding. For generations the practice had been that Irish farmers bred their horses and then sold them to England. But with the economy picking up there was more money to keep the horses at home.
Now he is going seriously for the flat. "We had a good enough year last year," O'Brien said. How good? "About 82 winners."
Charlie Swan, his first jockey, explained that people thought O'Brien worked his horses very hard but it wasn't true. "They got that impression because his horses are so fit. He sees them as individual personalities and he works them to their inclination. Then he can remember the personality of every single horse." O'Brien agreed that having a string of horses at that early age was an advantage, short-circuiting the normally laborious process of building up a training career.
ANNE-MARIE and the kids now join us. Their three-year-old son, Joseph, piled up cushions in the middle of the room and put on a solemn display of showjumping. It was hard to believe this sunny domesticity was at the heart of a tough, competitive business.
It began to appear that the explanation of O'Brien's success, apart from an intuitive rapport with horses, may, astonishingly in this foxy profession, be innocence - but not naivety. Added to this is purity of heart: head and heart belonging only to the horse and not adulterated by any distracting allegiance to such as books, plays, films or, indeed, booze.
And he works like a demon. He gets up at 5.30 a.m. and works until about 9 p.m. "Until the phone stops ringing," Anne-Marie said.
Didn't he find that a bit strenuous? "There is a certain amount of pressure before a big race," O'Brien said, with the air of a man not totally familiar with the term stress.
Fergie Sutherland, a Scotsman who has been training in Cork since the 1960s, said of him: "He has a background of horsemanship which is essential to a good trainer. [O'Brien was champion amateur Irish rider in 1993.] He is a brilliant trainer. Very good at his job and he has energy and enthusiasm. But I don't like to have too many horses myself."
There was no overt criticism of O'Brien intended here but a numbers game is involved which puts his apparently supernatural success in a more realistic context. Between the two stables up to 300 horses will pass through O'Brien's hands in a year. This is set against nine for Sutherland, trainer of last year's Cheltenham Gold Cup winner. So the figures work in O'Brien's favour.
But this does not deny his remarkable skill in being able to handle such a mob of horses. "His attitude towards horses and training," Bolger said, "is keep them happy, keep them healthy, race them often. If they don't win today, they'll win tomorrow." O'Brien's future success, Bolger said, would depend on the continued support of the big owners - and behind O'Brien are some of the most colourful characters in racing. The owner of the favoured Istabraq is J.P. McManus, a Limerick man who was briefly an end-of-the-line racecourse bookie until he decided the profits were too low and too slow and became a punter. He is now a financial dealer with headquarters in Geneva but he never misses Chelthenham. As a punter he describes himself as a man "with balls of steel".
Another is Michael Tabor (54), a north London bookie made good. In 1995 he sold his string of Arthur Prince shops to Coral for £15 million. He is now a tax exile based in Monte Carlo. Tabor has rarely been interviewed or even photographed by the racing press. Like McManus, he is a spectacular gambler.
His principal partner in a recent £10 million yearlings purchase in Kentucky was John Magnier, heir of the Vincent O'Brien legend - at least by marriage. He married Vincent's daughter and bought the Ballydoyle stables. A powerful force in Irish racing, he lives most of the year at the Sandy Lane hotel in Barbados, which he bought recently.
Peter O'Sullevan, the BBC commentator and legend of the turf, suggests that "interval training" may be one of the keys to Aidan O'Brien's success. This method was probably invented in Ireland, borrowed from showjumping in recent years, and adapted to racing. It involves working horses for short intervals at short distances. Martin Pipe is an exponent in Britain of this. Pipe also plays in high numbers - but his record is 230 (in 1991).
In Britain, O'Brien's achievements are not denied. "It's amazing what he has done," O'Sullivan said. "He has green fingers with horses, without any doubt. He's obviously a very focused and dedicated young man. Numbers are a big factor, but you have to show some talent to get into that situation." Success in this country often leads to exile. But Aidan and Anne-Marie O'Brien show little inclination to go abroad. Why should they? They have everything they need here, they say.