IRISH Champions Festival is all about Group 1s, the weekend hosting the greatest concentration of top-level races in the calendar with six such races, and it could be worth looking back at past meetings to see which trainers do best.

This fixture was put together under the Irish Champions Weekend banner in 2014, and since then there have been 56 Group 1s at the meeting, the Flying Five upgraded to that status in 2018. In that period, there have been 24 unique winning trainers, such diverse success a feather in the cap of the weekend.

But no one has done better than Aidan O’Brien in Group 1s at the meeting, his sons also doing well as the table 1 shows.

Since 2014, Aidan O’Brien has won each of the Group 1s at the meeting at least once, with five wins in the Champion Stakes and four in each of the National, Moyglare and St. Leger.

Yet it is Joseph O’Brien who has been most profitable to follow at the meeting, his five winners supported by healthy place numbers too, and he has done this from relatively small numbers which is a surprise given he is the highest volume trainer in the Irish flat scene.

As of last Monday evening, his 544 runners this flat season is a long way clear of Jessica Harrington with 375 while his 186 individual horses to run his season is well ahead of his father with 130 individual runners.

Selective

His approach to the Group 1s this weekend has been more selective, and his winners here have been at good prices, none of the five sent off shorter than 15/2.

The National Stakes has been a good race to him with three winners, and North Coast could give him another decent chance this year.

That one was well beaten by Daytona at Naas in July but the way he travelled then suggested seven furlongs would be more his thing, and he ran out an easy winner in one of the trial races, the Tyros at Leopardstown. The collective of British-based horses has done well in Group 1s at the meeting with Charlie Appleby, Kevin Ryan and Roger Varian each winning two such races.

British-trained

Their record in Ireland so far in 2025 is mixed, however. In the 2024, British-trained horses won 19 races during the Irish flat season, their highest number since the 28 in 2018, though for much of the 2010s the figure was in the 20s.

Those 18 winners came from 132 runners, a win strike-rate of 14.4% while the place strike-rate was 37.9%. It wasn’t so much the number of those winners as the quality, however. Six of them were Group 1s, three were Group 2s and there were six winners at Group 3 and listed level combined.

So far in 2025, British horses are 10 winners from 80 runners in Ireland, a win strike-rate of 12.5% while the place strike-rate is 26.3%, and this year the quality has been lacking. Field Of Gold was brilliant in winning the Irish 2000 Guineas but he is the only Group 1 winner for Britain here this year, and there was just one Group 2 winner to go with him and six winners at Group 3 and listed level combined.

Hard to find

They have been profitable to follow as a group, up over 30 points to level stakes, but that is more in theory than in practice as the winners were hard to find. There was a 40/1 winner of the Corrib at Galway, a 22/1 -winner of the Greenlands, along with a couple of 12/1 winners and there have been plenty of disappointing short ones like Poet Master, Kalpana, Rumstar and Jel Pepper.

Skukuza and Sky Majesty have been the star performers for the raiders this season, winning twice apiece, but overall, they have ground to make up on last year’s totals going into the weekend.

ONE British horse that will not be in the Irish Champion Stakes is Ombudsman, John Gosden saying last week that he would ‘not appreciate running against multiple entries from one stable on a track with a short straight’ though Aidan O’Brien wasn’t about to let the comment pass, suggesting - presumably tongue-in-cheek - that Gosden might not be the best loser.

It was hardly a war of words as racing doesn’t do trash talk, in public at least, but it did raise ideas about the nature of Ireland’s best flat race.

Gosden is of course correct about O’Brien dominating entries for the race; since it became part of this weekend in 2014, Ballydoyle have had 33 of the 84 runners in the race, 39% of the fields.

That has given the yard a lot of power in deciding how the race might be run though they have not always exercised that power.

Ballydoyle horses

Looking back at the 11 runnings since 2014, Ballydoyle horses have made the running on five occasions, and of those five only three looked pure pacemakers, the outsiders Deauville (2018), Hunting Horn (2019) and Stone Age (2022).

The 2022 winner Luxembourg cut out the running in the last two years though his starting price then suggested he still held a meaningful chance himself.

Other than that, three fancied horses from other yards have been the running, Golden Horn (2015), Eminent (2017) and Ghaiyyath (2020) while outsiders went forward in the three remaining years, one of them a Dermot Weld runner that was there to make the pace for another Hamdam Al Maktoum horse in 2014.

That said, Gosden may be concentrating more on recent runnings when thinking of the Ballydoyle dominance of the race as their horses have controlled the pace in each of the last three years.

Short straight

Position may have as much of a role in deciding the outcome of the Champion Stakes as pace, allowing that the two factors are linked. The short straight at Leopardstown can produce its share of horror stories from meeting to meeting, and those cases become magnified in the intense post-race analysis of Group 1s.

I still break out in a cold sweat at the thought of Alexander Goldrun meeting trouble in the 2005 race though many of the races in the 2010s were cleaner in this regard.

Tarnawa was unfortunate in 2021 when carried into the middle of the track by St Mark’s Basilica, Ryan Moore keen to get out on the better ground, and Ballydoyle had no other runner that year as they were happy to make it a speed test for their Poulains winner against a stronger Aga Khan stayer.

Vadeni could have done with a clearer run in the straight in 2022 but 2023 was the year when Ballydoyle got it most right in terms of position, Luxembourg and Point Lonsdale shepherding Auguste Rodin around the inner as both Nashwa and King Of Steel were forced to come from further back and make their challenges wide.

That may have been peak Ballydoyle choreography, but they do not always get things as right (see this year’s King George), and Saturday’s big race will surely have its usual share of discussion points.