Annemarie O’Brien had a simple answer here this week when asked how she feels about the race on Friday that will see two of her husband Aidan’s horses line up against another that is trained and ridden by the couple’s two sons. “It makes me feel very old,” she said, “but if any of them can be good enough to run well and win it, it would be wonderful.”
The Breeders’ Cup has seen many clashes of the generations over the years, but never one quite like this. Roly Poly and Hydrangea will line up for Aidan O’Brien in the Juvenile Fillies Turf, as the trainer seeks either his 22nd or 23rd Group One winner of an already remarkable season, depending on results earlier on the card. And if the betting is correct, by far the biggest obstacle standing in his way is Intricately, trained by Joseph O’Brien, who was until recently his father’s principal jockey, and ridden by Donnacha, Joseph’s 18-year-old brother.
Joseph O’Brien will surrender one record and secure another if Intricately wins on Friday. When he steered St Nicholas Abbey to victory in the Turf at Churchill Downs in 2011, he became the youngest winning jockey in Breeders’ Cup history, an achievement that could pass to Donnacha on Friday. His brother, though, would simultaneously become the youngest winning trainer in Cup history, an achievement that would leave their father burning with pride, even in defeat.
Racing has been ever-present in the lives of the O’Brien’s four children and they have travelled as a family to the Breeders’ Cup for many years. “They haven’t known anything else from when they were very small,” Aidan O’Brien said this week. “They were always pitched in. It’s a gas watching the two of them working together but all four of them, Sarah and Ana too, that’s the way it is. There’s nothing hidden, it’s all out in the open.
“Joseph had the choice to come and run here or at Newmarket [in October], and [Intricately] is probably going to learn the most here. He was always that way, he always had an opinion when he was riding for us the whole time, and he’d be out there thinking it through a lot.
“We don’t take anything for granted and they don’t, either. When it happens for anyone we’re always delighted.”
Intricately has already denied O’Brien senior in a Group One this season, with a short-head defeat of Hydrangea in the Moyglare Stud Stakes at The Curragh in September. It was Joseph’s first Group One victory as a trainer, just a couple of months after his licence dropped on to the mat, and also Donnacha’s first as a rider.
Their father, by contrast, has won nearly 300 Group One races in his career, and is still in with a chance to equal Bobby Frankel’s all-time record of 25 victories at the highest level in a calendar year.
Intricately was a 25-1 outsider for the Moyglare but her success was not a complete surprise for her trainer. “We expected her to be thereabouts,” Joseph O’Brien said this week, “because she was only a length behind some of the other fillies [in her previous race] and Donnacha said he’d ride her more positive next time and he’d be closer.
“It’s great to be here and it’s great that she has a chance. I’m a little worried about the tight turns, but other than that she’s in good form and I don’t think the ground will be an issue.
“Donnacha is a bit younger than I was when I rode St Nick, but he’s had an unbelievable year and he’s riding very well. I wouldn’t want anyone else on her.”
When it comes to facing up to his father’s fillies, Joseph reflects the sense from all sides in the O’Brien family that Friday’s race is a win-win. “It’s not really opposition,” he said. “I’m delighted if he wins and he’s delighted if I win.
“We both know that in this game, every day is a new day and just because you’ve won today it doesn’t mean that tomorrow is going to be your day as well. You have to enjoy the good days and move on from the bad days because there will be plenty of both.”
