Aidan O'Brien at Ballydoyle© Photo Healy Racing
John Gosden was asked recently to reflect on what is turning into Aidan O'Brien's greatest season. "I have enormous respect for the quality of the horses and the superb training of them," Britain's top trainer said. It was a typically fluent statement. O'Brien receives a couple of hundred of the best bred raw material every year and trains them outstandingly well. It's a combination which makes him a statistical phenomenon. The combination is also inextricably linked.
Acknowledging O'Brien as an exceptional talent while pointing out how he has the best ammunition to work with is hardly heretical. It certainly won't diminish the achievement when he almost inevitably passes out Bobby Frankel's world record of 25 Group/Grade 1 wins in a calendar year. It is simply recognition that measuring the merits of any trainer is inevitably an interpretative exercise since it's ultimately the horses that do the running.
O'Brien's entitlement to a place on the pantheon of great trainers is as inarguable as the impossibility of precisely and definitively gauging where.
There are those within racing who have no problem with O'Brien - either personally or professionally - who insist the idea of a number of other outstanding training talents being unable to secure the same results with the same raw material is downright delusional. They also point out that proving such a theory is impossible. For one thing O'Brien's position is singular.
He is in an unparalleled position in racing history in effectively being private trainer for the world's most powerful bloodstock empire and annually receiving a glut of the very best bred horses to work with. Yes it's a pressurised role but one which is the envy of every horseperson on the planet.
Typically he never fails to point out his good fortune. But it is the sort of fortune that has to be calculated into the reckoning of those who will point to the numbers game as confirmation of O'Brien's supposedly unique merit. Boiling such status down to bare figures ignores circumstances and can never be a definitive measure of sporting superiority.
Roger Federer has more Grand Slam tennis titles than Rafael Nadal but the Spaniard has historically got the better of their matches. Jack Nickalus has twice as many major wins than Ben Hogan yet plenty who know their golf, and remember both in their pomp, insist Hogan was superior. David Beckham won more than George Best but only a dimwit can believe that made him greater.
So you don't have to be of a certain vintage to be adamant that while Vincent O'Brien's statistics are being overshadowed by his Ballydoyle successor there's still no querying his status as the supreme training genius racing has ever known. The scope of his influence extends to breeding too since much of the Coolmore empire, and its seismic impact on the bloodstock industry, is fundamentally rooted in his eye for a horse.
It's this identification and acquisition of fledgling talent which is usually the most vital part of a trainer's job. It's certainly part of the 'MV' legend. It's also why, for instance, many point to Willie Mullins status as jump racing's modern maestro. Yes he trains them beautifully but the skill is in picking them up in the first place.
O'Brien's unique position excuses him that hustle, a factor perhaps behind persistent resentment from some within National Hunt racing about O'Brien's pursuit of the world record unfairly overshadowing Mullins achievement of both sourcing and producing 32 Grade 1 jump winners in 2015.
Arguing which is the greater is a classic bar-stool debate without answer. There are few if any definitive answers within racing when it comes to the human element.
For instance it's impossible to know for sure how much of the staggering and sustained progress some of O'Brien's runners produce is down to his horsemanship or classic blood eventually coming through in animals which are by definition less prone to injury than their cheaper and less sound opposition. Maybe it's a bit of both.
US Navy Flag had his tenth start of a juvenile season when landing the Dewhurst and it's perfectly possible to both admire the staggering piece of training involved in that and also point out that steering a full brother to a triple-Group 1 winner can sometimes be a damn sight easier than keeping a wonky 60-rated handicapper on the road. After all the good ones are supposedly easiest to train.
Of course it's all a theoretical proposition and one O'Brien supporters can dismiss on the basis that it was he who John Magnier turned to in the first place.
That decision to trust a young and largely National Hunt rooted trainer has been vindicated like few others. Presented with the opportunity of a lifetime 'AP' has turned it into a series of results to put several lifetimes in the shade. He is unquestionably a great trainer of great horses. Whether that makes him unique, or whether others could secure the same results with the same raw material, is an academic debate, and one for which O'Brien can be content in having the best seat in the house.
Tony Martin answered with a definitive "no" when the renowned handicap specialist was asked if he'd ever before saddled a two year old to win first time out after Nibiru did just that at Naas on Sunday. Ted Walsh's Castletownshend was runner up with a Ballydoyle newcomer in third.
There's a world of difference between bumpers and a six furlong maiden. But it's perhaps a reflection of the elite nature at the top end of National Hunt racing that more and more people usually more associated with the jumps now seem to think they have a better chance of making it pay in the flat game.
With many priced out of the National Hunt store market, there appears to be recognition that investing in the flat pays off both in opportunities to race and in international opportunities to sell on. It represents a real volte-face between the disciplines over the last decade.
But to end on the munitions theme, Pat Smullen has conceded the jockeys title to Colin Keane after the latter's Naas hat-trick on Sunday brought the championship score to 90-83. "It's all over - I just don't have the ammunition," said the nine-times champion.
Smullen is a supreme professional who bears comparison with any rider in the world right now. That Keane is set to call himself a champion against such company is an achievement to rank with Smullen's own in initially breaking through against the likes of Kinane and Murtagh. But you can't do it unless locked and loaded with the right ammo.
