Aidan O'Brien: Classic contenders and horses to follow

At the release of the European Two-Year-Old classificatios, Aidan O'Brien shared his thoughts on his stellar 2025 season with his juveniles and what his hopes are for his leading lights this season.

The master of Ballydoyle was responsible for six of the top 11 in the classification, having won three of the six two-year-old races at Royal Ascot, enjoyed nine Group One wins, seven individual Group One winners and a remarkable 50 individual two-year-old winners in Ireland.

A: I think they ran consistently enough through the year. It looks to be a nice group with high enough ratings, and they were kind of scopey horses as well, so it looks like they could be nice three-year-olds. So, you'd have to say we were happy. Obviously, we missed some that we thought had a chance of winning but didn't, but that's the way it is.

A: Gstaad looks probably an English Guineas horse to start off. We were very happy with him last year. We were a little bit disappointed with him in the Dewhurst, it just didn't go right for him and he just got trapped back a little bit. He ended up in not a nice position really, but we were delighted with him in America.

Puerto Rico is a good, strong, big, mature horse. He could be an English Guineas horse or a French Guineas horse on the way to an Irish Guineas. We entered him in Dubai in the Classic, the three-year-old dirt race, but it'll probably come too early and if that is the case, he'll probably end up starting in one of the Guineas, either the English or the French. Maybe the two would go to the Guineas. We think he's that type of horse, he's a high cruiser and it's possible that he could get further than a mile, even though he has plenty of pace.

We couldn't have been happier with both really last year, and we think the two of them are nice horses to look forward too for this year. 

A: Hawk Mountain is a lovely horse. He won the William Hill Futurity Trophy and could be a French Derby horse. He could be an Epsom Derby horse too. We couldn't be happier with him.

Pierre Bonnard we think is a made Epsom horse. He looks like he should get a mile and a half well, he's a big horse. We’ll start him in a trial and see, and we’ll probably do the same with Hawk Mountain, but Pierre Bonnard looks like a proper Epson type horse and could come back to an Irish Derby after that, or something like that.

A: Yeah, we thought Precise will probably start in the Guineas. She obviously went to America and didn’t get to run, but the experience would have done her no harm. 

Diamond Necklace is lovely. It's possible that she could do that or she could go to a French Guineas, because she won the Boussac, but I would imagine both will probably start at a mile and we’ll see where we go after that.

True Love is lovely. I went to the sprint in America with her, and I probably should have left her for the Juvenile Fillies, but we thought Precise was going there so there was no point running her in that against Precise. She's lovely, she's done very well. She's a big filly. We could think about starting at seven [furlongs] in Leopardstown, or one of the British trials at Newbury or somewhere like that, and see if there would be a chance that she would get a mile. If that was the case, obviously she’ll go down the Guineas route. If we thought not, then she'd obviously go the sprinting route. But she’s a big, powerful, strong filly really, and has done very well over the winter.

A: I think so. He looks an exceptional stallion. Obviously he had fertility problems as a younger stallion and so I think that probably curtailed his career breeding wise, but I think his fertility is all good now and he looks to be exceptional. I think we only trained one or two before over the years. So yeah, he’s obviously like a typical Danehill and we remember what Danehill was. 

A: Isaac Newton ran well in France at the end of the year and could be nice, we could see more of him. A horse called George Stubbs who hasn’t run yet, he’s a Camelot horse. Flushing Meadows, who’s by Wootton Bassett. He was second at Leopardstown. And then Constitution River is another one, as is Albert Enstein. Montreal won a maiden very impressively at Leopardstown and could be anything. So there’s those few, but there’s also others that haven’t run and we’ll see what they do when they run. The horses are all in and cantering at the moment, they’re all on their programmes since the middle of December, so everything is going good so far.