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Ascot milestone on the horizon for record-breaking O’Brien
By Racing TV
Last Updated: Sun 14 Jun 2026
Breaking new ground at Royal Ascot – or anywhere else for that matter – is nothing new for Aidan O’Brien.
Now he stands on the cusp of becoming the first to train 100 winners at the meeting, and the man who rode his very first believes it was simply destiny he would become one of the finest to ever saddle a horse.
O’Brien was only a year into his tenure as the master of Ballydoyle when Christy Roche helped him get off the mark, guiding Harbour Master to victory in the 1997 Coventry Stakes.
Ninety-five more have followed in nearly three decades since for a man, who according to Roche, is blessed with a work ethic and love of the thoroughbred that was always going to see him succeed in racing’s most pressurised hot-seat.
“It’s easy for people to say now, but I’d known Aidan since he was working in Jim Bolger’s and I always thought he would go on to do great things,” said Roche.
“I recommended him for the Ballydoyle job and it doesn’t surprise me he is achieving everything he is.
“It was fantastic to go there and get Aidan a two-year-old winner at the meeting. He had only started training (for Ballydoyle) and it was great to get him off the mark, any winner at Ascot is so important.
“Aidan has such an appetite for the job and working. From early morning to late at night his main interest is training horses. Others might go off for a round of golf or whatever, but with Aidan it is racing and racing only.
“It was a pleasure to ride and work for him earlier in his career and it’s wonderful seeing his hard work down the years being rewarded.”
Aidan O’Brien with Kieren Fallon (Nick Potts/PA)
Among O’Brien’s current haul of 96 at the Royal meeting a record nine of those have come in the Gold Cup, arguably the week’s most cherished prize.
It was the race’s only four-time winner, Yeats, who kick-started the 56-year-old’s dominance of the week’s staying showpiece in 2006.
The man aboard that day was Kieren Fallon, who won 30 races at Royal Ascot for trainers including the likes of Sir Henry Cecil and Sir Michael Stoute, but is in no doubt about the “genius” of O’Brien.
“Yeats had a touch of class, just like his trainer,” said Fallon.
“Aidan has the cream of the crop, but they always turn up on the big occasion and he always gets the results.
“He’s a bit like Frankie (Dettori) when he was riding, everything just happens for him for at Ascot. He places them so well and they are in the right races. I don’t know what the likes of (the late) Henry Cecil and Aidan do, but they’re able to just get horses to improve and improve.
“On the day the good trainers have this gift of having their horses spot on and I was lucky to ride for a lot of them.”
Trainer Aidan O’Brien at Royal Ascot (David Davies/PA)
Fallon sees no reason why O’Brien will stop once raising his metaphorical bat to the Ascot grandstands, adding: “He’ll reach 100 and it won’t make a blind bit of difference to Aidan.
“He will just roll on, keep doing the same thing and be back again with probably a better team next year. He’s a genius of a trainer.”
“There was never any pressure and the biggest challenge was getting from the car park to the weighing room. When you are riding for people like Aidan, meetings like Ascot are what you enjoy – it’s when you are trying to win on the bad ones that it becomes hard!”
Such is the distinguished list of world-class jockeys to ride for O’Brien, the Yeats baton would pass from Fallon to Mick Kinane and then Johnny Murtagh, who was entrusted with sealing history aboard the great son of Sadler’s Wells in 2008 and 2009.
Aidan O’Brien (right) celebrates with Yeats (Steve Parsons/PA)
“The two years with Yeats were probably when it was most tense, everyone was wanting him to win the four in a row,” said Murtagh.
“But you always knew going there Aidan would have them really, really ready, there was no stone unturned.”
Other than the current Ballydoyle number one, Ryan Moore, no man has ridden more Royal Ascot winners for O’Brien than Murtagh’s dozen, two-thirds of which came in Group One events.
Murtagh added: “The whole operation is always geared up for Royal Ascot, it’s racing’s biggest stage and Aidan always has his horses primed. You feel the importance leading up to it, but you would go there knowing the horses are always going well.
“It was always a great position to be in. Then you just needed luck because Ascot can be a tough week if it doesn’t go right and it’s a place everyone is trying so hard and the opposition is so strong.
“The Group Ones in Ascot are the big ones and with Aidan I was able to win them.”
Aidan and Joseph O’Brien (Niall Carson/PA)
While winning in racing’s global shop window is essential business for one of the biggest breeding operations in the world, there is still time for some emotion to creep into proceedings and none more so when it was O’Brien’s son Joseph returning victorious.
Now a Classic and Royal Ascot-winning trainer in his own right, he will always be in awe of his father’s accomplishments.
“It would be extraordinary for him to get to 100 – it is hard enough to have one winner at Royal Ascot, it’s the toughest meeting in the world to have winners at. Every year dad and Coolmore go there with a strong team, but it would still be a magnificent feat,” he said.
“In Royal Ascot you can do everything right and still come away with no winners, that is how competitive it is. Everyone in the world dreams of potentially having a horse just to run well there and that’s without contemplating winning.
“His success is testament to the Coolmore and Ballydoyle teams working together, firstly in buying and breeding these horses then training them and producing them to peak when it matters.”
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