History beckons for O'Brien JIM DELAHUNT AGAINST ALL ODDS

HE called it his "greatest week in racing", but you just can't help feeling Aidan O'Brien is going to have even greater ones along the way. The boyish-looking Irishman dominated the Group One races at Royal Ascot last week but not only did he do everything right with his horses, this genius of a horseman also continued to project an image which the best PR gurus in the world would struggle to manufacture.

Despite appearing to drink from the fountain of eternal youth, O'Brien will actually turn 40 in October next year but in 15 years as a trainer he's put together a list of big-race triumphs which will almost certainly see him remembered as the most successful trainer in European history if his relentless progress is maintained over the next 20 years or so.

O'Brien isn't stupid enough to share every last secret about his business with all and sundry, but he certainly makes you feel as if he does.

Pre-race and post-race, interviews are conducted in a manner which leaves the ordinary race watcher feeling that O'Brien is on their side, presenting them with the hard facts before the horse runs and praising everyone bar himself when the animal wins.

With certain horses in his stable, O'Brien will even accompany them in the parade or down to the start, Wednesday's feature-race winner Duke Of Marmalade getting the personal treatment last week before O'Brien trudged back in front of the stands to his viewing position in the paddock, laughing and joking with the lads and lasses who'd just released their own charges into the care of their jockeys.

In Johnny Murtagh, O'Brien appears to have found a rider who will be very difficult to dislodge as No 1 at Ballydoyle when Kieren Fallon returns, as expected, from suspension.

Following in the footsteps of the older Mick Kinane, Fallon and Jamie Spencer, Murtagh only has a seven months age difference between himself and his new boss and the pair appear to be on the same wavelength both in public and in private.

Even before their Ascot heroics, O'Brien's horses had landed six Group One races already this season (five of them ridden by Murtagh) and another four at the Royal meeting means O'Brien's personal best of 23 Group/Grade One successes, recorded in 2001, is under threat.

Henrythenavigator and Duke Of Marmalade have contributed three Group One wins apiece with no sign yet that they may be vulnerable against the current crop of threeyear-old milers and 10-furlong older horses. Another half-dozen top-level successes for these two can't be ruled out and don't forget that the trainer has yet to get anything like serious with his juveniles, an age group which O'Brien worked wonders with in 2001, winning nine of the 10 Group One races for two-year-olds in Europe that year.

Aidan Patrick O'Brien is no relation to Michael Vincent O'Brien, the man who, back in 1950, spent GBP17,000 on 285 acres of farmland to the north east of Churchtown in County Tipperary and proceeded to transform it into the premier racing establishment in the British Isles. The two are however linked through Vincent's son-in-law, John Magnier, the man Aidan now refers to simply as "the boss".

With the English and Irish St Legers to come this year, O'Brien is racing's Tiger Woods to his namesake's Jack Nicklaus. As Tiger puts his 14 Major total on hold due to injury, Nicklaus's 18 Majors record looks set to stand for a bit longer than it might have done but the inevitability of it being beaten is still undoubted.

The same applies to Vincent O'Brien's haul of 27 Irish Classics and 16 in Britain, as the current master of Ballydoyle sits on totals of 17 in Ireland and 14 over here. O'Brien the younger may well have just enjoyed his greatest week in racing but, based on all known form since he emerged on to the scene in 1993, there are even greater weeks, months and years to come.

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