As if more proof was needed as to what a load of cobblers A O'Brien talks.

Was that awkward head carriage a sign of quirkiness or just the horse cranking his noddle looking for company.

APOB the guy who came out with this beauty

People can be helped and they can get through it. They can get to a place where they still love it without being addicted. I always say a problem isn't a problem when you know it's a problem. Somebody with an addictive personality might get addicted to drinking tea, that's the way it is."

no ever horse has done what kyprios has, COT best horse ever in yaed and we still havent got to bottom of him. utter cringeworthy, and watch when cot wins next week against the most pathetic field , god help us

He's always looking for the best horse he's ever trained. Luckily 4 or 5 come around every year.

must be terrible for him, all these fantastic horses that he still hasnt produced a true great

In the RP interview today there's a list of his best horses according to RPRs...Who would have guessed Hawk Wing? He's top on 134, followed by Galileo and Rip Van Winkle on 132.

Was that awkward head carriage a sign of quirkiness or just the horse cranking his noddle looking for company.

The obvious reply would be: 'it's just his second start and he's still patently green', but imo it's probably the Montjeu (damsire) in him coming out.

Blimey, all those 'best I've ever trained' claims he's made down the years but according to the trade paper's handicappers, his 'best I've ever trained' was over 20 years ago

Hawk Wing, officially rated 137, so probably his best on official ratings too?

rip van winkle

Apart from Galileo, just because of his ability as a sire, & **** as a stayer,  most of his horses will be a footnote in the greatest horses of the last 50 years

Needs a triple crown winner, and then come back as a 4yold and do it at a variety distances and win the Breeders Cup Classic. But more importantly needs to beat good horses from other stables!!!

nearly had a triple crown winner, and as it proved arguebly the worst bunch of 3 year old ever, and to think that camelot if he had won that would be compared with nijinsky . EVEN IF cot wins saturday , he wont be remembered as a great

Coolmore have purchased one of the leading fancies for the BC Classic:

ALERT: .
@coolmoreamerica
Ashford Stud has acquired #Fierceness for stud duty. The international racing operation now has three of the top contenders in the
@BreedersCup
#Classic. Read more: https://go.bloodhorse.com/4fh7TuW
@BH_EMitchell

Is this a vote of confidence for the chance of City Of Troy?

On the question of 'greats' -isn't it up to the breeders to produce the raw material of any potential 'great'?
Breeding is not a measurable science as far as I know -there's an element of chance in it such that no one can know what any combination of genes will throw up.
Trainers can only work with the actual specimens that come into the yard.

O'Brien talks cobblers? listen Aiden is as close to God as we are ever going to get. just worship the Man ffs.

Oneten your going straight to the bad fire for that comment.

'acey', do you not think AOB is in the present position mainly because of the continuous firepower from the "free" Coolmore breeding sheds? A few former AOB charges were picked-up very cheaply at sales and rejuvenated by other lesser fortunate trainers.

I agree with you 100% impossible. I believe you could swap aob with various other top 10 trainers and the results would be similar. Might be slightly better, might be slightly worse, but on the whole prob not a whole lot different. He's training racehorses, not reinventing the wheel !
It's down to the superior bloodlines of the horses he receives from the coolmore breeding operation.

The man is a genius.  His record is second to none.
One day he wins a lowly maiden with a horse and then, 8 days later, it wins a group 1.
He did a similar thing with Serpentine to win the Derby (with a horse who wasn't close to top class).  He keeps on delivering the goods and has been for 30 years.  The way he switches horses in distance or class is sometimes brilliant.  For instance, casually winning the Irish Ces with a horse carrying top weight who had just been 4th in the Irish St Leger.  Bringing Kyprios back, not just to see the racecourse again, but to win more group 1s.  He would have won the triple crown with Camelot, but for the official winner being trained by a subsequently revealed drug cheat.
And whats this about never training any of the greats besides Galileo?  Istabraq the best hurdler of them all?
I could go on but it would take me several hours to write about all his achievements.

The man is half horse ffs.

a no group1 winner in uk/ire this year 3 year old and above under 10 furlongs

He wouldnt be winning 10% of  what hes doing now in the era of hern, stoute, cecil, harwood, cumani, fabre , when they were on top of their game

You people,yeah you people.....Just dont understand.

hawk wings rating is on a 10 light heavy ground win in lockinge when he was the only horse who acted on the day in the conditions and am I right in saying he didn't win another race after that ?

Hawk Wing only ran one race after Lockinge procession finished lame at RAscot and retired thereafter

as a 3yo finished runner up in 2000 and Derby to two other top AOB horses in Rock of Gibraltar and High Chapparal
then won Eclipse easy enough before form tailed off probably due to those hard race - he was a top class horse all right

Lockinge win on good ground no fluke just a sensational performance

According to official ratings, Hawk Wing was only 3lb inferior to Frankel and was a better horse than Sea The Stars.

I have two abiding memories of Hawk Wing, and doesn't include his Lockinge win, it's being turned away by High Chaparral in the Derby, and James Willoughby not being the horse's biggest fan.

not as I remember it WILLO and THE CAPTAIN waxed lyrical about hawk wing and gladitoious 24/7 for months on end,putting them up for the boat race,FA cup anything and everything,the joke been from them jumping aboard the bandwagon,they never won another race between them ,I have multiple threads over the yrs reminding them of it

Maybe with Willo it was more about the progeny of Hawk Wing, rather than him as a racehorse, but it certainly seemed to be a continuous 'joke' with him.

But a quick google search and this comes up, an article about ratings where Willo recollects (paragraph 1) arguing that Rock Of Gibraltar was a better horse than Hawk Wing.

https://www.johnston.racing/wp-content/uploads/2022_02_Why-I-rate-the-rankings-by-James-Willoughby.pdf

how could Hawk Wing win any more races if he was injured then retired ffs!

Elisjohn....acey worked for most of them

I do not care about Hawk Wing, High Chaparral, etc, from AOB stable. If AOB finds one the equivalent of Dancing Brave or even Bering I'll heed his musings more seriously. Until he sends a proper 3-year old colt to win The ARC his eulogies will be in one-ear-out-the-other.

If you'd have swopped stalls with Rock of Gibraltar then Hawk Wing would have won the Guineas , in my view.

...and this coming from someone who was told to back the winner on the QT 6 days before the race