O'Brien: Ireland's standard-bearer

Racing: Ballydoyle's new master may match the records of his famed name sake. Richard Edmondson reports

Raids that could prove reminiscent of when the Vikings crossed the North Sea to collect their duty frees are about to hit British racing. The coastline of arrival may be different, but the menace will be unmistakable in 1995 when Aidan O'Brien, wh o thisyear became - numerically - the most successful trainer in Irish history, begins sending over his forces.

When Dermot Weld set an Irish calendar year record of 150 winners, he appeared, in a Beamonesque leap forward, to have set an insurmountable benchmark. During 1994, however, Aidan O'Brien, just 18 months into his career, has jumped over the sandpit. He currently has 174 successes to his name.

The figures are unquestionable. Now O'Brien, whose career could be considered to be a cranked-up version of Martin Pipe's, would like to prove himself in bigger races. And that means turning his vision to the land over the Irish Sea.

"We'd like to train good winners," he said." We've trained a lot of little ones but we haven't trained many good ones yet, and time will tell if we can do that. We'll be having a look at coming over to England now. There are more races over there."

If there is little bombast in these words, it should be noted that O'Brien would be the teacher's pet in a nightschool understatement class.

Until recently, there had been few published words from the Co Kilkenny trainer. O'Brien is naturally taciturn and naturally guarded towards the press, as interviewers who are asked to fax copies of their pieces before publication have discovered.

"I've never not talked to the press," he said. "There was never any foundation for saying I wouldn't. It's true that I don't have much time, but I don't mind talking to anybody."

The great trainers, and O'Brien would not mind the comparison, have never been party icebreakers. They tend to be rather keen on horses and when a questionnaire appears there is a blank in the space left for hobbies.

For those who know their Irishmen by cartoons, a meeting with O'Brien would be disconcerting. This trainer does not drink and his words come sparingly enough to suggest he has insulted the Blarney Stone.

O'Brien is 25, but his stature and cherubic countenance are of a boy who could be refused entry to the cinema's more racy offerings.

He fits neatly into the public stands from which he always watches a race and, on the (many) occasions he has to greet a winner, he skips through the crowd with the abandon of young boy on his way to the riverbank with a fishing rod in one hand and a jamjar in the other.

O'Brien's actual boyhood was in Killegney, near Clonroche in Co Wexford. The third of six children, his equine principles probably owe most to his father, Denis. "My father taught me all the basics," he insists. "All the simple things like understanding a horse and like feeding a horse."

Raw inculcation can be counter-productive in a child, but there was more than parental pressure at play here. O'Brien paid his way by weeding and picking strawberries, milking cows and driving a forklift truck for the Waterford Co-Op. But in his mind allthe time were horses.

The most educational of O'Brien's formative years were spent with Jim Bolger, where there was a meeting of minds. Neither smoked, neither drank and neither shirked. When the apprentice left, it is said, it was one of the few occasions that Bolger would not have escorted a confederate off the premises with a pitchfork at hand.

At this stage O'Brien had the stable knowledge, the riding knowledge (he was formerly the champion amateur jockey of Ireland) and he had also married well. His wife, the renowned horsewoman Anne Marie Crowley, is the daughter of Joe Crowley, who is not the worst trainer the country has ever seen.

O'Brien himself quickly dispels the notion that he is some sort of godfather figure in the operation. "With everybody that gets as big as we are, it's important to have a good team around them, not just one person," he said.

The record of Team O'Brien has not shocked the figurehead, but, at the same time, it has not spoilt his ego either (as a whole the Irish appear to find it a little easier not to be affected by triumphs).

"We haven't been that surprised by the success," O'Brien said. "We don't feel pressure about trying to do it again next year. We don't mind too much about that."

Thus far, O'Brien's British forays have delivered a temporary blank. Last season he sent out Minella Lad (third in the Stayers' Hurdle) and Glenstal Flagship (sixth in the Triumph Hurdle) at the Festival. "And I ran a filly in Ascot," he said. (An Irish

colloquialism means that horse always run "in" a venue rather that "at" it).

The set-up (based around the Bolger and Pipe regimes of training up a steep hill) has become so big that it has spread from O'Brien's three yards around Carriganog to Ballydoyle, Vincent O'Brien's seat of excellence, where the young man now houses his two-year-olds.

This arrangement, and the surnames, suggest O'Brien at least has the right pedigree for the job. Dr Michael Vincent O'Brien is the best trainer Ireland, and probably the globe, has ever produced. Aidan O'Brien has begun to match his early feats and now comes the stubborn test to equal his achievements on Britain's expectant stage.