AT the end of the last Irish flat turf season, I looked at how various trainers were doing relative to their figures in the three previous campaigns, with two yards standing out as having down years: Ger Lyons had 40 winners during the 2023 campaign when his previous three-season average was 66.3 winners, while Joseph O’Brien had 79 winners versus a three-season average of 99.3.

Lyons has been back in the groove so far in 2024 turf season. Through the end of June, he has 24 winners whereas that number was just 11 last year, while in 2022 and 2021 those figures were 30 and 35 respectively.

There were three winners over Derby weekend and at the time of writing on Tuesday, he has already added six winners in July, while at the upper end of the ability scale, Mutasarref has recovered from injury and won a couple of blacktype races, while he has a number of promising juveniles like Babouche, Beckman and One Smack Mac. The picture so far in 2024 is nothing like as positive for O’Brien, and he might currently be in the most challenging period of his training career.

Through the end of June in 2021 and 2022, he had registered 43 domestic winners during the official flat turf season in Ireland. Last year that number dipped slightly to 39, but has fallen to just 21 so far this season.

This comes at a time when the yard has had more individual runners (132, per Irishracing.com) than any other in the country, Aidan O’Brien and Jessica Harrington next in with 106 and 104 respectively. Again per Irishracing.com, the winner-to-runner percentage of 17% - 23 of those 132 horses have won in Ireland - is low. Almost all of the other top 20 yards are breaking at least 20%.

International approach

O’Brien tends to take a more international approach to racing than almost any other trainer in Ireland, but even so the figures at home are surprising.

Perhaps the headline stat with the yard is that their last Group 1 winner came with Al Riffa in the 2022 National Stakes and while there has been good graded National Hunt success in the interim, their focus is the flat and so far this year their main wins have been a pair of Group 3s and three listed races.

Al Riffa himself did take a step back in the right direction in the Eclipse on Saturday, running the best race of his life and looking a big danger to City Of Troy at one point, and may be able to pick up a weaker Group 1 in what seems a sub-standard middle-distance division, though the depth behind him seems lacking. Perhaps Galen, another victim of City Of Troy, may yet step into group races as he returns to fitness after a long absence.

Expected improvement

One thing that feels off with the O’Brien runners lately is the lack of progression from one start to the next from horses that should be obvious improvers. Taking the simple idea that a horse that runs well without winning on debut should be able to go close next time seems to back this up.

Between 2016 when O’Brien started training flat horses and 2022, his runners that finished second, third, fourth or fifth on debut and then went for a maiden next time won 34 times from 183 runners with 103 places, win-and-place strike rates of 18.6% and 55.8%.

In 2023 and 2024, those figures have dipped to five winners and 24 places from 45 runners, win and place strikerates of 11.1% and 53.5%.

An approach that is producing only mixed results for the yard is the acquisition of older fillies and mares from other trainers, something that seems to have become a focus particularly over the last two years.

With fillies and mares like this, their value will mainly be for breeding after racing, so getting wins in their final seasons is not the be and end all, but even so, their returns have been underwhelming. Per Horse Race Base, since the start of 2023, O’Brien has run 20 fillies or mares that were previously with other British or Irish yards, with five of them winning a race. As a group, they have had 75 runs, winning six times between them.

Honey Girl was the pick with the improvement she showed last year, and my figures do not capture the likes of Goldana and Gregarina as they came from the continent, but given that these fillies and mares often come in at the upper end of the sales, notably Jumbly and Rogue Millennium, better might be reasonably expected.

AS the calendar turns to July, the minds of most Irish punters switch to Galway mode, with racing now viewed through the Ballybrit prism, and two races from last Saturday stand out in that regard.

The Bia Energy Bellewstown Handicap Hurdle was a good race in its own right, albeit one where even the top-weight Man O Work would struggle to get into the Galway Hurdle, his mark of 133 here a touch below the 135 needed to get into the big one.

That one has always had his own way of hurdling and his run here is worth forgiving as an early mistake knocked him out of rhythm, his previous effort on the flat after 250 days off full of promise, though a track like Galway may not be ideal given his hold-up run style.

The story of the race was the gamble landed on Petrol Head, not long with this yard, but now two from two with them, supported from an early 15/2 into 7/4, and he showed a better attitude than the runner-up Aeros Luck, who held his head to the side in the finish. Perhaps the most interesting runner with a view to Galway was the fourth, Me Wee Bonnie Lass. Returning from a 65-day absence, she looked in need of a stiffer test than this easy two miles, as she had done on her previous start at Punchestown, and the Galway hill might provide it.

Handicap pointer

She seems versatile regarding ground and the two-mile handicap hurdle for mares on the Wednesday of the meeting looks a suitable target.

Dermot Weld has long been a believer that juveniles should have some experience before heading to Galway and the typical profile of his two-year-old maiden winners at the meeting backs this up: of the 20 juvenile maidens he has won since 2008, 15 were having their second start.

Saturday’s Naas maiden fourth, Truth Be Told, shaped like this initial run could bring him on, perhaps a lot, as he was slowly away and green when asked for his initial effort.

The penny soon dropped with him, however, and he was fastest of all in both the final two furlongs, shaping like the best long-term prospect in the field.

Only three-quarters of a length covered the first four home but both the winner and third brought solid form into the race, while it is a further positive that this son of Princess Highway is entered in the National Stakes.