HORSE RACING:Brian O'Connor reflects on a season dominated by two Irish trainers whose paths have crossed on more than a few occasions.
IT SOMEHOW seemed apt that the first man to congratulate Jim Bolger as New Approach passed the Epsom Derby winning post in front was Aidan O'Brien. Bolger's former pupil has never been slow to acknowledge what he owes to the trainer who first gave him an opportunity to display that now world-renowned horsemanship.
But looking back at 2008 now, it also fits that O'Brien was standing right there at the older man's shoulder during his finest moment in racing.
Normally, a year in which a trainer possesses a Derby winner good enough to win two other Group One prizes would guarantee dominance of any review.
Throw in another multiple Group One winner like Lush Lashes and a star two-year-old like the Dewhurst victor Intense Focus, and Bolger shouldn't really have any competition for the limelight. But just as O'Brien's shadow loomed large over him at Epsom, then so it does at the end of 2008.
That Ireland's champion trainer should dominate any year is hardly a surprise given the Coolmore-fuelled resources at his disposal at Ballydoyle. But this season only confirmed that O'Brien is operating at a level different from almost anyone else in world racing right now.
There's no other way to look at a year that yields a massive 23 Group One victories and which still allows some sceptics to dismiss the final tally as a bit of an anti-climax.
The reason for that was the fixation on O'Brien's pursuit of Bobby Frankel's world record of 25 top-flight victories that galloped alongside every one of the major Ballydoyle winners for the second half of the season.
It was a perfect media thread to try to knit together a theme for such remarkable dominance of Europe's most prestigious races. Even O'Brien admitted to getting caught up in the thrill of the chase. At one stage it was 1 to 8 about the American being overhauled, but, just as it seemed inevitable, the wheels started to come off.
What had been assumed to be "gimmes", such as Mastercraftsman and Yeats over the Arc weekend, got turned over, and a blank at the Breeders' Cup also put such odds-on assumptions on hold. By the end of the campaign Yeats in the Prix Royal Oak and Fame And Glory in the Criterium de Saint-Cloud brought O'Brien's total to "only" 23, the same as his tally in 2001.
Long after the statistics are forgotten, though, the memories of such stars as the five-time Group One winner Duke Of Marmalade and the dual-Guineas hero Henrythenavigator will linger. So, too, will the impact of Johnny Murtagh's first year as the number one jockey at Ballydoyle.
After finally getting the chance to occupy a hot-seat he had expected to get before, there was no mistaking the relish that Murtagh took from making the most of his opportunity.
The Duke and Henry and the triple Gold Cup hero Yeats, not to mention Haradasun, Halfway To Heaven and many other Group One winners, all brought Murtagh's talent to the fore.
But maybe none more so than the relatively unheralded Mount Nelson, whose return to top-class form in July's Eclipse was an exhibition of supreme timing and confidence from his jockey.
A remarkable statistic then is that Murtagh rode just two of the five O'Brien horses that provided the first clean-sweep of Ireland's classics in 73 years. Instead it was Séamus Heffernan who filled in on Halfway To Heaven (1,000 Guineas), Frozen Fire (Derby) and Septimus (St Leger).
There was no keeping the Ballydoyle team away from the headlines even if at times they didn't want to be there. Months of whispered rumblings about their use of pacemakers got more voluble after Royal Ascot, and then erupted after Duke Of Marmalade's Juddmonte victory at Newmarket in August.
The stewards on the day took no action over Colm O'Donoghue's ease off the rails on Red Rock Canyon, but in a monumentally cack-handed manoeuvre that put O'Donoghue's in the hae'penny place the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) summoned O'Brien, Murtagh and O'Donoghue to London for a team-tactics inquiry.
Both jockeys ended up being banned for a week and O'Brien was fined. The BHA's insistence that there was nothing sinister about the Irish team's actions didn't prevent the whole episode leaving a nasty taste in the mouth.
As evidenced during the race-fixing trial, the BHA's ability to foul up is not insubstantial. However, this appeared like mealy-mouthed pandering to an admittedly vocal minority.
And team tactics reared its head again in November as the Flemington stewards in Australia appeared to get particularly "toey" about getting stuck into the Irish team after O'Brien's three runners finished down the field in the Melbourne Cup.
Murtagh and O'Donoghue spent hours in and out of the stewards room, but both Septimus and Honolulu were lame after the race and left officials with little room for manoeuvre. Wayne Lordan, however, looked in trouble after his pace-forcing tactics on Alessandro Volta back-fired spectacularly.
It required O'Brien to return to the track from his hotel and engage in the sort of heated argument with the senior steward which clearly revealed the Irishman's steelier side.
Controversy wasn't a stranger to Bolger either. The reception given to New Approach at Epsom was comparatively muted on the back of his late change of heart about running in the Derby.
After spending weeks strenuously insisting that New Approach would not run at Epsom, Bolger could hardly complain about the reaction to his about-face. That it should impinge on the finest moment of a remarkable career, though, was as regrettable as it was easily avoidable.
In the midst of it all, a stunning ride by Kevin Manning threatened to get overlooked. But even the sulphuric atmosphere around Epsom on the day couldn't stop appreciation growing afterwards.
New Approach, always headstrong, did his best to throw the race away by pulling too hard.
That he still had enough in reserve to win with something in hand testifies to a singular talent; but would he have got there without Manning's inspired smuggling down the inside route?
Lush Lashes managed the not inconsiderable feat of winning Group Ones at a mile and a mile-and-a-half, and only a nightmare passage prevented her also landing the Nassau at Goodwood.
In comparison, Irish fortunes over the jumps were rather under-whelming. A total of six winners at Cheltenham was perfectly respectable but less so was that only Kazal in the Stayers' Hurdle managed to make the frame in the championship events.
Paul Nicholls' Gold Cup 1-2-3 allowed no argument about the British champion trainer's dominance of the jumping game right now. Less conclusive was Denman's claims as the top chaser as Kauto Star patently ran below form.
More worrying for Irish trainers, though, was the power of the Nicholls team in this country. Denman, Neptune Collonges and Twist Magic all landed Grade Ones, and the evidence of the dearth of Irish chasing talent right now has encouraged Nicholls to come back here with a vengeance.
Already, Oslot has landed the Galway Plate and Kauto Star the Nicholson Chase at Down Royal. An Irish trainer's title to keep his British championship company doesn't look that ambitious a goal after all.
But home horseplayers look to have more pressing concerns right now than the potentially embarrassing idea of an overseas trainer eclipsing them.
The economic downturn is starting to bite with a vengeance. No sooner had the Curragh finally got plans for their €100 million facelift through the planning stages than the plug had to be pulled on the project. The hope is that it will be only a short-term delay, but hopes in racing have a regular habit of being dashed.
The reality of the wider world has also bitten outside the Curragh. Prize-money totals for 2009 have already been dropped by seven per cent and Horse Racing Ireland have also been forced into a series of other cost-cutting measures.
How much of an immediate impact the world economic situation has on racing remains to be seen. But since the unprecedented success of the last decade is usually mostly put down to that fondly remembered Celtic Tiger wealth, the omens don't look good.
Maybe it is no bad thing for Ireland's international racing profile then that Ballydoyle and Coolmore operates at a level apparently impervious to economic shifts.
Mind you, it's not just in terms of financial firepower that Team Ballydoyle are in a league of their own right now.
What We Already Knew
That Aidan O'Brien holds a position of incomparable influence on racing right now.
What We Learned
New Approach proved that a rampant refusal to settle doesn't automatically mean defeat.
What We Think Might Happen
Those golden Celtic Tiger monopolies will become just a distant Cheltenham memory.
