VICTORY for Minnie Hauk in the Juddmonte Irish Oaks last Saturday meant that Aidan O’Brien is technically on pace to at least match his world record-setting season of 2017 when he recorded a staggering 28 Group 1/Grade 1 wins.
Minnie Hauk made it 11 top-flight successes for team Ballydoyle in 2025 - the same number they had notched by this stage of the year in 2017. The back-end of the campaign has often been most kind to the Co Tipperary operation, with so many big international pots to be hunted. Whether he manages to smash his own record will be a storyline worth watching through the second half of the year.
Even away from the classic action last weekend, though, it was quite the two days for O’Brien. Back-to-back Curragh trebles led to a haul of six winners on Irish Oaks weekend, including a Group 1 classic and two Group 2s. His two-year-old team really stood up, supplying 50% of the tally, and that has been a standout theme throughout the year at the Curragh. He has been seriously dominating the juvenile races at Irish flat racing headquarters.
Of the 21 races run at the Curragh so far this season for two-year-olds, Donnacha O’Brien has won one, Jack Davison and Joseph O’Brien have each won two, and both Adrian Murray and Ger Lyons have captured three apiece. It’s a signal of just how tough it is to win any juvenile race at the Curragh when you see that Aidan O’Brien has mopped up 10 two-year-old winners at the Curragh alone this season, nearly 48% of all juvenile races there. He has also done it with 10 individual horses (eight of which were either bred by Coolmore or are out of mares trained by O’Brien). That must bode extremely well for the next generation of classic prospects coming through.
When going down through those Curragh juvenile races, what catches the eye is how it’s not just the winners that O’Brien is supplying, but so many of the eyecatching placed runners. Look no further than last weekend. New Zealand was leading home a Ballydoyle 1-2-3 in the opening seven-furlong maiden on Saturday (a race with a fine record of producing Group 1 performers) and his beaten stablemates, Isaac Newton and Action, look nailed on to win maidens at the very least.
Supreme depth
In the Group 2 Railway Stakes, O’Brien’s two runners finished first and second, albeit True Love turned it into a one-horse race. Even in the Curragh Derby weekend maiden that New Zealand was a promising seventh in on debut, Ballydoyle supplied the 1-2, with Dorset beating subsequent impressive Killarney scorer Benvenuto Cellini.
Likewise, Dorset had graduated from finishing second in a Curragh maiden on debut in June. Who did he bump into then? Another Ballydoyle juvenile, National Stakes entrant Amadeus Mozart. When Brussels won a Guineas weekend maiden here, he had stable companion Kansas directly behind in second too.
So, in total, O’Brien has won 10 of the 21 juvenile races at the Curragh so far this year, and supplied either the 1-2 or 1-2-3 in half of the contests he won. He has won or been placed with 20 of his 33 Curragh juvenile runners in 2025, beating a tidy average of 73.4% of all rivals.
Four group races for two-year-olds have been run at the Curragh to this point in 2025. Three were won by Ballydoyle juveniles (Albert Einstein in the Marble Hill, Beautify in the Airlie Stud and True Love in the Railway), while they came within a short-head of winning the other when Flushing Meadows was second in the Anglesey. Don’t forget, the same stable took out the Coventry, Norfolk and Queen Mary at Royal Ascot too.
For those targeting a two-year-old contest at the Curragh right now, based on how the year has unfolded so far, there’s a high possibility a talented Ballydoyle youngster will be standing in their way to beat. What’s more, these juveniles could do no harm to his arsenal for a record-breaking Group 1 push later in the year too.
THERE was a variety of feedback to this column earlier in the month on the topic of flat racing’s popularity in Ireland, and how both attendance and television viewing figures point to National Hunt being comprehensively favoured by the public in this country. That is in spite of the Irish flat product often being more appetising as a betting and horse trading medium than the jumps.
One point that did come back from a number of industry figures on the topic of attendances at flat fixtures related to the Bulmers Live series of Thursday evenings at Leopardstown through the summer, with several of those who are racing regularly at these meetings flagging what felt like a smaller turnout at some fixtures this summer than was the case in years gone by, albeit it can vary depending on the musical act night to night. The crowd was reportedly healthier this week for the fixture that included a show from Darren Kiely. During the summer heatwave earlier this month, some trainers and owners indicated it was particularly noticeable on that Thursday night fixture, which fell on a perfect evening for people to come racing weather-wise, that it didn’t resonate as might have been the case before. All the while, reports from Kilbeggan the following night were very much positive in terms of the crowd that turned out for their Midlands National meeting.
Likewise, other meetings that came during the same window, like Sligo’s National Hunt card on the Sunday, was reportedly well supported - relative to the racing quality gulf that would have been between what was on offer there versus Leopardstown’s blacktype action.
It did pop up recently when looking back at a HRI fact book for 2015 that a then record crowd of over 10,000 attended The Human League live at Leopardstown that summer.
Are Leopardstown’s Thursday cards suffering due to flat racing not having the same appeal as National Hunt racing? Could more be done to promote these meetings in a significant population area? Is a €35 admission price on the gate for a mid-week meeting alienating a standard racing fan who isn’t necessarily interested in the concert?
Multi-faceted scenario
There were more prominent names playing the series in previous years than is the case this season too. Surely it must be a challenge for organisers to attract suitably high-profile talent to perform when booking costs certainly haven’t gotten any cheaper for leading acts of late. What’s more, it feels as though there has hardly ever been as many concerts country-wide this summer, therefore increasing competition for customers’ discretionary spending significantly in this space.
We shouldn’t expect this volume of gigs to slow down any time soon either. We are in the age of Spotify being the dominant but dreadfully poor paying driver for artists’ progression. The average worldwide streaming fee paid to an artist for one listen on the platform is reportedly just €0.00238 - roughly €2.38 for every 1,000 streams.
Once upon a time, artists went on tours to promote the sale of albums. Now, they release albums to promote their concert tickets - at much higher admission prices than previously.
It all points to more concert dates being the norm in this event space going forward. If that trend continues, and crowds are to quieten at the likes of Leopardstown, perhaps some sort of review to the Thursday night series structure might be worth exploring. This is obviously a period of transition for the track anyway, with Tim Husbands recently exiting and the process of appointing a full-time chief executive still understood to be ongoing.