Story of the Day: The life of (Joseph) O'Brien who lands day two feature at Royal Ascot 2022

In seventy, eighty, ninety years-time when enthusiasts not yet conceived are studying horse racing in the early 21st century, they will surely be talking about Joseph O’Brien in even more reverential tones even than his prolific dad Aidan.

While clearly no one doubts what Aidan has achieved, to have, as Joseph has, started a race-riding career (in 2009), won a string of top-level races – including six at Royal Ascot – been a champion jockey twice, retired from the saddle, taken up training and sent out a first Royal Ascot winner all within thirteen years is the stuff of barely-credible fiction.

He won’t reach his thirtieth birthday until May 2023.

And State Of Rest’s victory in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes, a decade after the trainer rode So You Think to success in what is now Royal Ascot’s first £1m race, only adds to a growing list of exploits across the globe by horses prepared by Joseph O’Brien and team on Owning Hill – ‘the Hill’ – high up in Ireland’s County Kilkenny.

Most famous perhaps are two wins in Australia’s Melbourne Cup, with Rekindling in 2017 and Twilight Payment (2020), but, prior to Ascot, State Of Rest had carried off the Group or Grade One trophies in the Saratoga Derby in America, the Cox Plate at Moonee Valley, Melbourne and in France’s Prix Ganay at ParisLongchamp.

To be fair, however, whether it’s the flat of jumping, big or rather smaller, O’Brien seems at home.

However, just like Aidan who, with other members of the family, crowded into the winners’ circle to celebrate, is almost infuriatingly modest about everything.

He said: “Well, I have been very lucky – since I started training I’ve had support from some big owners and also great people and I’ve been lucky that they have had some really good horses.

“We’re very keen – and always keen – to travel wherever we have to go to win as much money or as big a race as we can anywhere in the world if we have the horse for it.

“We have a great team of people at home with me and in the yard; everybody works together and if we win, great, and we’re not afraid to have a go and lose, and if it doesn’t go right which it doesn’t always that’s fine too - you learn and regroup.”

For those of us who have been following Joseph’s progress since the days he trotted along behind Aidan, when he was nothing like the force of today, it feels like a remarkable story though perhaps also an inevitable one too.

State Of Rest’s jockey Shane Crosse – who heartbreakingly missed out on O’Brien’s 2020 St Leger winner Galileo Chrome when testing positive for Covid – was riding at Ascot for only the third time and the trainer admitted they walked the track twice to be sure of their plan.

That was to try to lead all the way, gradually turning the screw, on the four-year-old son of Starspangledbanner, who had run with credit when a fast-closing third in the Tattersalls Gold Cup at The Curragh, and things worked out to perfection.

With success in America, Australia and France but nothing in these islands until now since winning a maiden at Fairyhouse two years to the day earlier, this victory ensures that a horse which has not been trumpeted like he deserves will now get full credit.

O’Brien agreed. He told me: “He missed the first half of his three-year-old year – until July or August – and that’s a lot of the reason why, and then he went on those international missions in the second half and it’s only now that he’s turning up in these big European races.

“There was a big-money race in Saratoga and he came through his prep well and we thought that on the best of his form that he could win the race – he loved the quick ground out there – and he took it race by race from there.

“He’s proved himself here to be a very high-class horse, very versatile, very special.”

He certainly has. And with entries close to home in the Eclipse, Irish Champion Stakes and Arc, there are no excuses for not enjoying him all year.

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