Trainers

Joseph Patrick O’Brien is, of course, the son of perennial leading Irish trainer Aidan O’Brien and first found fame as first-choice jockey to his father. O’Brien Jnr. was Irish Champion Jockey in 2012 and 2013, but is probably best remembered for winning the 2,000 Guineas, the Derby and the Irish Derby on Camelot – who came within three-quarters of a length of winning the Triple Crown – in 2012. At 5’11” tall, Joseph O’Brien ultimately become unable ride any lighter than nine stone and, in March 2016, announced his retirement from race-riding.

In his new career as a trainer, based at Owning Hill, Co. Kilkenny, O’Brien wasted little time in saddling his first Group 1 winner, Intricately, in the Moyglare Stud Stakes at the Curragh in September 2016. He has since become a highly-respected and successful trainer, under both codes, not only in his native Ireland, but also on British soil and elsewhere. Still only 30, at the time of writing, O’Brien has already chalked up a total of 16 Group 1 wins worldwide, including the Melbourne Cup twice, in 2017 and 2020, with Rekindling and Twilight Payment, the Fillies’ Mile at Newmarket twice, in 2018 and 2020, with Iridessa and Pretty Gorgeous, and the St. Leger, in 2017, with Galileo Chrome.

 

Website: https://josephobrienracing.com

Social: https://x.com/JosephOBrien2/

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Contact / Email:  info@carriganogracing.com

Tel: +353 (0)51 643 796

Born on Christmas Day 1941, James ‘Jim’ Bolger began his training career in the vicinity of the long-defunct Phoenix Park Racecourse in Castlenock, Dublin in 1976. In fact, 14 years later, just six weeks before Phoenix Park closed permanently, in late 1990, Bolger was pictured at the course with a 16-year-old Anthony, later Sir Anthony, McCoy, who had just ridden for the first time in public. By that stage, had already moved to his current base, Glebe House in Coolcullen, Co. Kilkenny, and was well on his way to the top of his profession.

In 1991, Bolger was Irish Champion Flat Trainer, with a record 126 winners, and retained the trainers’ title in 1992. Indeed, he reached the milestone of 2,000 career winners on May 25, 2008, when Teacht An Earraig easily justified favouritism in a mile-and-a-half handicap at the Curragh. In 2008 as a whole, Bolger saddled 55 winners on the Flat on Irish soil and has since added nearly 800 more to his career total.

New Approach, who won the Derby in 2008, and his son, Dawn Approach, who won the 2,000 Guineas in 2013, are among the exceptional colts Bolger has trained down the years. He has also done well with fillies and mares, including the likes of Jet Ski Lady, who won the Oaks in 1991, and Finsceal Beo, who won the 1,000 Guineas on both sides of the Irish Sea in 2007.

Still listed in the ‘Racing Post’ and elsewhere as ‘Mrs. John Harrington’, Jessica Harrington has officially been training, in one form or another, since taking over the permit from her late husband, Johnny – who died in 2014 after a long battle with cancer – in 1989. Based at Commonstown Stud in the small, rural village of Moone in the south of Co. Kildare, which is nevertheless within 15 miles of the Curragh, Jessica Harrington first attracted wider attention when saddling Oh So Grumpy, winner of the Grade 2 Galway Hurdle in July 1994.

Thereafter, Mrs. Harrington was responsible for a succession of top-class National Hunt horses, including the prolific Moscow Flyer, winner of the Arkle Challenge Trophy in 2002 and the Queen Mother Champion Chase twice, in 2003 and 2005, and Sizing John, winner of the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 2017. She is likewise no stranger to high-profile winners on the Flat, either. Career highlights on the level include no fewer than a dozen Group 1 wins, starting with Pathfork in the Vincent O’Brien National Stakes at the Curragh in September 2010 and ending with Magical Lagoon on the same course in July 2022. Mrs. Harrington also has a Classic success to her name, having won the Irish 1,000 Guineas, also at the Curragh, with Alpha Centauri in 2018.

 

Website: https://www.jessicaharringtonracing.com/

Social: https://x.com/Jessica_Racing

https://www.instagram.com/jessicaharringtonracing

Contact: office@richardhannonracing.co.uk

 

 

Based at Rose Cottage, in the village of Dalham, West Suffolk, less than six miles from the centre of Newmarket, Jane Chapple-Hyam is, of course, the ex-wife of Derby-winning trainer Peter Chapple-Hyam. However, since taking out a training licence in her own right in 2005, she has saddled no fewer than a dozen Group race winners at home and abroad.

The first of them was the juvenile Exceed And Excel colt Klammer, who, in October 2010, won the Group 3 Horris Hill Stakes at Newbury. Her best horse so far, though, was the New Bay filly Saffron Beach, who finished runner-up in the 2021 1,000 Guineas, but gained compensation when reversing the Guineas form with Mother Earth in the Sun Chariot Stakes, over the same course and distance, the following October. In August 2022, as a four-year-old, Saffron Beach also justified favouritism in the Prix Rothschild at Deauville to give Chapple-Hyam her second Group 1 win.

Chapple-Hyam enjoyed her most successful season, numerically, in 2021, when she saddled 34 winners from 242 runners, at a strike rate of 14%. She hasn’t quite hit the same heights since, at least in terms of numbers, but her seasonal tally of 22 winners in 2023 contributed towards £639,519 in prize money, making it the most profitable campaign of her career so far.

 

Contact: janechapplehyam@hotmail.co.uk