You may be right, DJ, but you are missing the point. If O'Brien would allow his horses to speak for themselves with their exploits on the track that would be fine. But instead we have to put up with this appalling guff virtually every year. I can't be bothered to rejig my past posts on the subject so instead I'll reproduce word for word two I made in 2013. Check out the exact words he used:
"In an ever-changing world, it's nice to know there are at least some constants. Australia, winner of the juvenile G3 yesterday is, according to his trainer, "very special" - apparently, "the lads" were "knocked out by him as soon as they saw him" and "we've always thought there was something very different about him...We really have always thought the world of him...he'd have enough pace for [the Dewhurst]...the speed he started to show at home marked him as a bit special." No mention of his "data" but, otherwise, it's all there. It makes you wonder how they let him go off 5/2 in a four-runner race. Perhaps none of the lads like a bet."
"Update: Australia is "totally extraordinary" according to O'Brien. "Everyone probably knows we always thought he was the best horse we've ever had. I don't want to be blowing up the horse but he was always doing things no two-year-old has ever done before." It's only two years since he had this to say about Camelot: "The boys get all the information every day from the works and the times and they were saying that his work was so exceptional it's hard to believe. In comparison to other horses his data was incredible. He can probably do whatever you want..." In other words, Australia is the best horse they've ever had since the last one and until the next one."
Now we have him on the subject of Air Force Blue: "...in February of last year he was doing things on the gallops he shouldn't have been able to do with the groups he worked with...he was head and shoulders above everything else...he looked exceptional...the best two-year-old we've had...we've been very lucky to have some great horses but when a horse comes along like him..."
As with Australia, I'd simply make this point: if what O'Brien says about Air Force Blue in February last year is true, how on earth did this horse go off three months later at a drifting 4/1 on his debut in an ordinary Curragh maiden? How did I, betting genius that I am, manage to back him (the only time I've ever backed him,the only time he didn't win) the following day at 14/1 ante-post for the Coventry? It is simply inconceivable that a horse who was actually "doing things he shouldn't have been able to...looking exceptional...head and shoulders above everything else" wouldn't have been red-hot in those markets rather than tepid. Unless, of course, all the stable staff at Ballydoyle are kept under Druid's Lodge conditions and the (non-stable) "lads" have gone off betting.
