Aidan O’Brien goes into this week’s Newmarket July festival firmly in the hunt for another British trainers’ championship this season.
The Irishman won the last of his six cross-channel titles in 2017 and is rated just a 5-2 shot to bridge that gap in 2023.
Only the team of John and Thady Gosden (4-5) are rated above O’Brien for a campaign that runs to the end of the year but is more likely to be decided by the time of the final English Group One prize in October’s Futurity at Doncaster.
Paddington’s Eclipse defeat of Emily Upjohn at Sandown on Saturday was the latest in a series of lucrative big-race victories for O’Brien this summer.
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It saw him close the gap with the Gosdens in the table to slightly more than €300,000, with the English duo topping the table on just over €4 million.
O’Brien first scooped the cross-channel crown in 2001 when Galileo’s Derby and King George victories proved instrumental in him becoming just the third Irish-based trainer to pull off the feat.
Paddy Prendergast won three in a row between 1963-65 and Vincent O’Brien was successful twice, in 1966 and 1977. The latter’s Ballyodyle successor has also emerged on top in 2002, 2007, 2008 and 2016.
With Auguste Rodin being pointed later this month at the King George, worth over €1 million, and Paddington in line to contest Goodwood’s Sussex Stakes, which is worth £1 million (€1.17 million), there is the potential for scooping up more big-money prizes sooner rather than later.
O’Brien, who has been champion trainer in Ireland for the last 24 years, and 25 times in all, has already bagged over €3 million in prize money in Ireland this season.
In the even shorter term, there are bumper Group One prizes up for grabs in Newmarket this week, with the action culminating in Saturday’s Pertemps July Cup.
O’Brien secured a record seventh Eclipse at the weekend and could also go out on his own in July Cup history if lifting the prestigious sprint for a sixth time at the weekend.
He currently ties with both Vincent O’Brien and Charles Morton, the latter’s five wins coming early in the last century.
Little Big Bear is set to renew rivalry with his Commonwealth Cup conqueror Shaquille, who emerged on top by over a length at Royal Ascot.
Little Big Bear is a 7-2 shot in current betting to get his revenge in a race his trainer first won in 1999 with Stravinsky.
Saturday night saw a different sort of landmark for another Co Tipperary-based trainer as Fozzy Stack secured a first top-flight career victory when Aspen Grove landed the $500,000 Belmont Oaks.
Under a superb Oisin Muphy spin that saw the Irish filly make light of an outside draw, Aspen Grove belied 15-1 odds to land the Grade One prize in New York.
The filly, who had finished last in the Irish 1,000 Guineas on her previous start, pounced late to win by three-quarters of a length and is now likely to continue her career in the US.
“He gave her a good ride, the [room] came at the right time, the wire came in time. It worked out well,” said Stack, whose father, Tommy, famously won at the top level with the 1,000 Guineas heroine Las Meninas in 1994.
It was Murphy’s first ride in America since landing the 2021 Breeders’ Cup Distaff on the 49-1 outsider Marche Lorraine in 2021.
The Kerry rider came close to a famous double on Saturday night when Andrew Balding’s The Foxes looked an unlucky runner-up to Far Bridge in the Belmont Derby.
