IT is just about certain now that Aidan O’Brien is going to break Bobby Frankel’s record of 25 Group/Grade 1 wins in a calendar year. The only questions now are when and where, not if.

It is difficult to get your head around the achievement. A Group 1 win is massive for any trainer, one Group 1 win in a year, one Group 1 win in a career, so to have 25 of them in the same year is mind-boggling. More than any other trainer in the world. Ever. That’s what a world record is.

It is possible that the champion trainer could smash the record, that he could set a total this year that will not be beaten for a very, very long time. He has several chances of adding to his tally this weekend.

Actually, he could have already added to his Group 1 tally this morning before you open your paper, with (The) Taj Mahal and Johannes Vermeer going in the Ladbrokes Stakes at Caulfield in Australia early this morning.

He has four runners in the Dewhurst Stakes at Newmarket today. Okay, so he has Expert Eye to beat but, at combined odds, it is no bigger than 3/1 that one of the Ballydoyle quartet will win it. And he has two runners in Grade 1 races at Woodbine in Canada tomorrow night: Rain Goddess in the EP Taylor Stakes and Idaho in the Canadian International.

There are myriad opportunities later in the season too. There is British Champions’ Day at Ascot next Saturday for starters, with four Group 1 races, and Caravaggio and Winter and Churchill and Highland Reel all possible runners.

There is the Breeders’ Cup meeting at Del Mar on November 3rd and 4th, with 13 Grade 1 races, including six run on turf.

There’s the Prix Royal-Oak in France and the Cox Plate and the Melbourne Cup in Australia, and there are the end-of-season Group 1 races for juveniles, the Racing Post Trophy and the Criterium de Saint-Cloud and the Criterium International, which Aidan O’Brien has won four times, more times than any other trainer.

And after that, there is the international meeting at Sha Tin in Hong Kong in mid-December, with its four Group 1 races, including the Hong Kong Vase, which Highland Reel won in 2015.