Race trainer Ted Walsh has told Setanta Ireland that Vincent O’Brien was an innovator who could lay claim to be the greatest figure in the history of horse racing.
Walsh trained Papillon to win the 2000 English Grand National and Commanche Court to win the Irish Grand National, but feels that O’Brien, who died on Monday at the age of 92, was the man who brought racing into the modern age.
“He was a man before his time when it came to racing,” he told TheHub on Setanta Ireland.
“He transported horses in aeroplanes before most people were travelling in them. In the 1960’s, he brought Sir Ivor to Pisa in Italy to acclimatise to the hot weather.
"People think of things like that as a matter of form now, but that was a huge thing in those years, and showed his attention to detail and his meticulous nature.”
Walsh feels that O’Brien was unique in being both a great trainer and a great spotter of livestock talent.
“He could buy the raw material, the unexposed horses that he was involved in purchasing. Yearlings, to great flat horses that turned into great Derby winners.
"He had an eye to every aspect in the bloodstock world. He spotted the Northern Dancer line in America which produced Sadler’s Wells, which in turn produced Galileo. That changed Irish breeding.”
Walsh knew O’Brien from an early age in Fermoy through his father and Uncle Ted, and credits him as an integral figure in his racing education.
“He was a great man who would help you out if you asked him anything. That would be like a kid now in soccer walking up to Sir Alex Ferguson and asking what he should do! Touching the hem of his coat, you’d think you were getting some kind of education!”