Legends of Racing

For many Irish jumps racing enthusiasts, the sight of Michael O’Brien was a familiar one around Ireland’s racecourses. O’Brien was confined to a wheelchair for the final 37 years of his life following a fall from a horse in the USA in 1974. The three-time Irish Grand National winning trainer died on Friday after a long illness. Here are five of the highlights of a fine career.

The dazzling promise of Bright Highway

Only three horses in the history of racing have managed to land the two big races of the early part of the National Hunt season: the race now known as the Paddy Power Gold Cup at Cheltenham, and the Hennessy at Newbury.

It’s a double that’s hugely difficult to pull off: the races are run over different distances (the Hennessy is about half a mile further) and on different courses (the ups and downs of Cheltenham as opposed to Newbury’s flatter track), and they’re also just a couple of weeks apart.

In 1980, Michael O’Brien’s Bright Highway was one of the few to achieve the feat. Just a six-year-old when he added the Hennessy to the Paddy Power (then called the Mackeson), he was the ante-post favourite for the Gold Cup at Cheltenham the following March. However, he was struck down by a tendon injury which kept him off the track for two years and meant that he would never get the chance to deliver on his massive potential.

Glebe Lad makes it three Irish National wins for O’Brien

O’Brien had sent out horses to win the Irish National on two previous occasions (King Spruce in 1982 and Vanton ten years later) and he made it a rare hat-trick when Glebe Lad did the business in 1999.

Like Vanton in ’92, Glebe Lad was a fancied novice making the step-up in trip, and under a fine ride from Tom Rudd he stayed on bravely to hold off the challenge of Feathered Leader after the last.

Essex’s brilliant dual code double

There are few horses with the versatility to win on the Flat, over hurdles and over fences, but Essex was one of those. And not only that, but he was able to win lucrative races in the various different disciplines.

The highlight came in the winter of 2004/05, when he was a hugely impressive winner of the Irish Cesarewitch at the Curragh and followed up three months later by justifying favouritism to win the Pierse Hurdle at Leopardstown.

The Cesarewitch and the Pierse: two of the most competitive and prestigious handicaps of the Flat and National Hunt games, both delivered in style by O’Brien’s Essex.

Top weight Kadoun causes a massive Cheltenham upset

Owner JP McManus had four entries in the Pertemps Handicap Final at the 2006 Cheltenham Festival, and at 50/1 Kadoun was the longest priced. Indeed, he was virtually the complete outsider of the field for one of the most competitive handicap hurdles on the racing calendar.

He had mixed chasing and hurdling without much success for the previous year or so. However, finishing second in the Ballymore Properties Champion Stayers Hurdle at the Punchestown Festival had demonstrated his potential, and at Cheltenham Kadoun delivered the goods on the biggest stage of all.

In Compliance trumps the Gold Cup champion

In the winter of '06 Michael O’Brien saddled In Compliance to take on reigning Cheltenham Gold Cup champion War Of Attrition in the John Durkan Memorial Chase at Punchestown. The Cheltenham hero struggled to show his best in the heavy going, however, and O’Brien’s In Compliance ground it out to win the Grade 1 chase in style.

It was to prove a final Grade 1 win of O’Brien’s illustrious career, as he handed over the reins of his training operation to son-in-law Denis Cullen a couple of years later.