Edward O'Grady, multiple champion jumps trainer in Ireland, has died at the age of 75.
O’Grady passed away peacefully on Sunday evening at St James’s Hospital, surrounded by his family.
Based in County Tipperary, O'Grady was champion jumps trainer in Ireland four times consecutively from 1977 and trained 18 Cheltenham Festival winners, his last being Sky's The Limit who bolted up in the 2006 Coral Cup.
In a statement the O'Grady family said: "Edward was a cherished husband, father and grandfather and also one of the most respected and successful racehorse trainers of his generation.
"Over the course of an extraordinary career that spanned more than five decades, Edward trained just shy of 1,700 winners under rules. His name became synonymous with Irish National Hunt racing, and he was a formidable force at Cheltenham and across the racing world.
"Beyond the winners and the headlines, Edward was a man of deep intelligence, sharp wit, and remarkable warmth. He had friends on every continent, a story for every occasion, and a lifelong passion for the sport, the hunting field and everything equestrian."
Mike Vince tribute
That Edward O’Grady should have passed away just hours before the start of the Galway Festival makes the news even harder - he’s one of the few to have saddled winners of both the Plate (three times in four years) and the Guinness Galway Hurdle.
He inherited the licence at his County Tipperary yard from his father and long before the likes of Messrs Mullins, Elliott and de Bromhead came on the scene he had a Cheltenham record unmatched by any other Irish trainer except Vincent O’Brien.
He enjoyed some famous days at Prestbury - not least with the brilliant Golden Cygnet who won the 1978 Supreme Novices' only to lose his life at Ayr with the jumping world seemingly at his feet.
He claimed a second win in the Cheltenham curtain raiser with Back in Front, ridden by Norman Williamson in 2003, almost 30 years after his first, when Mouse Morris rode Mr Midland to win the National Hunt Chase. He is also one of very few to have trained more than one winner of the Festival Bumper - first with Mucklemeg and then more recently with Pizarro under Jamie Spencer in that controversial 2002 renewal.
It's perhaps fitting that after 29 years of trying he was the trainer who broke the Irish hoodoo in the Paddy Power Gold Cup, as it is now, at the Cheltenham November meeting, when Tranquil Sea won for Andrew McNamara.
When speaking with him years ago he spoke particularly warmly about Drumlargan’s win in the 1983 Whitbread Gold Cup, while his record at Esher also included a famous back-to-back success in 1995 and 1996 with Sound Man.
He did hold strong views. I well remember him saying of the handicapper ‘why was he always sent out of subtraction lessons at school? I was taught the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.’
O’Grady also had to overcome personal tragedy with the death of his second wife Maria, a former TV Producer, in a hunting accident.
They don’t make them like Edward O’Grady any more, and nowhere will the loss of a proud Tipperary man be felt more keenly than at Galway this week.
