As the Ballydoyle trainer weighs up the chances of his runners in next month's Derby he is also fretting over who will ride them
Chester's May meeting may not have shed a great deal of light on the likely outcome of the Derby next month but it did tell us a good deal about what the Flat season may hold for Aidan O'Brien.
The man from Ballydoyle took the wraps off a potential Oaks winner in Wonder Of Wonders and two older horses with Group One class, St Nicholas Abbey and Await The Dawn. With the immense So You Think and the 2009 Derby runner-up Fame And Glory also in the team, there could be few Group Ones over 10 furlongs or more this summer in which O'Brien does not field the favourite.
Even at this early stage the Derby starts to look like the key race in the trainers' championship. The new Champions' Day at Ascot in October will also be important but, if Henry Cecil's World Domination fails to live up to his billing in the Dante Stakes at York on Thursday, O'Brien will probably replace Cecil as clear favourite for the title.
Regardless of what happens in the Dante, O'Brien's Derby team seems sure to be a large one again. His yard is full of suitably bred colts, the step up in trip may well bring improvement and there is, after all, only one Derby.
But who will ride them? In particular, who will ride the prime contender? O'Brien will surely have a view on the relative merits of his posse and, even if he believes they are closely matched, John Magnier and his ultra-commercial Coolmore Stud operation will have a view on the ideal result in terms of stallion fees. What they will not have is a No1 jockey to put on top of it.
So far O'Brien has stuck firmly to his stated intention to use "the best available" following the departure of Johnny Murtagh as Ballydoyle's retained rider. And it certainly seemed to work well enough at Chester, where Ryan Moore rode all four of O'Brien's winners.
But the sight of Moore steering home a series of winners in Coolmore colours also begged the question of how much longer O'Brien can maintain his "best available" policy.
Moore will, in all probability, ride against these horses next time out and will do so having been given hands-on opportunity to assess both their strengths and, significantly, their weaknesses. When a result can turn on a nose either way, it is quite an advantage to concede to one of the finest riders in the business.
There are many benefits to employing a stable jockey. There is the continuity, the feedback and an ally to share the pressure. But there is also the security that comes from knowing that if he is riding for you, he will not be riding against you. That is a significant difference between this season and 2007, when O'Brien was the champion trainer even though Kieren Fallon, his retained rider, was suspended in Britain.
O'Brien is an exceptional trainer and possibly has a team of horses that could march through the season regardless of who is holding the reins. If so, and he still emerges as champion, it would suggest one of two things: either jockeys do not really make much difference or O'Brien is an even smarter operator than his many fans had imagined.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/may/09/aidan-obrien-jockeys-derby
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