AFTER their 19-year-old son, Joseph, had ridden Camelot to win the Investec Derby, Aidan O’Brien turned to kiss Anne-Marie, his wife. They were standing near the winning post but in the celebratory moment the rim of the trainer’s top hat collided with his wife’s elegant wide-brimmed hat and the kiss wasn’t quite as smooth as the race that prompted it.
But so what? This was the only moment that the O’Briens didn’t get right at Epsom. They won the Oaks with outsider Was on Friday and followed that success by winning both the Derby and the Coronation Cup yesterday. Never before had a trainer won the Derby with a horse ridden by his son, and never before had one trainer won the first four Classics of the season in Britain, as the 42-year-old Irishman has now done.
He is likely to win the fifth and final Classic of the British season as well because Camelot will be trained for the St Leger at Doncaster in September.
On the evidence of his brilliance over the cambers of Epsom Downs he should certainly win the Leger and if he does he will become the first thoroughbred since the great Nijinsky in 1970 to win racing’s Triple Crown (2,000 Guineas, Derby, St Leger).
An estimated 130,000 came to see the 233rd running of the Derby that, appropriately on this diamond Jubilee weekend, was expected to be a coronation — the afternoon upon which Camelot would prove his greatness.
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His jockey may be only 19 and riding in just his second Derby but nothing bothers him. Young Joseph rode Camelot as if doing a piece of work on the Ballydoyle gallops.
“Look at how much ground he had to make up,” said his father as he rewatched the race on a big screen a couple of minutes after the race. “Seeing it again still makes me nervous.” Joseph is six feet in height and far taller than most of his contemporaries but he has been able to keep his weight at just nine stone. If discipline allows him to ride, it is talent that has taken him to the pinnacle of his profession. He has struck up excellent partnerships with both Camelot and the winner of the Coronation Cup, St Nicholas Abbey.
Asked what it was like to have his son ride a Derby winner he had trained, Aidan tried to explain: “You dream about things and you’d say, ‘Maybe some day’, but this is one of those things you couldn’t even imagine. I’m not educated enough to find the words.”