Joseph O’Brien: My Stars For The Season Ahead

A great week was had at Listowel. Obviously we only had one winner but I enjoyed the week all the same.

Arkwrisht
Arkwrisht ran very well in the Kerry National. He was just beat by half a length by Potters Point and was a little bit unlucky really.

The ground was against him a little bit but we still had a good week in general and I was happy with how our horses all ran.

I’ve no major plans for Arkwrisht just yet.

He’s still a novice so all the novice races are open to him. Obviously he has ran very well in a big handicap race now too so he has lots of options and he’ll have a good few entries but we haven’t made our mind up just yet.

St Leger
Saturday’s St Leger at Doncaster was a cracking renewal. Rekindling ran very well to finish fourth and we’re very proud of him. At the moment he’s entered in Australia and he could also go to Champions Day at Ascot.

He has a couple of options and no real decision has been made yet. I’m very happy with the way he has progressed throughout the season. He started the season off very well and has only had one real blip all year, in the Derby, and I wouldn’t mind another couple of horses like him.

What a performance from Irish Derby winner Capri to win the race. He stays well and has a lot of class, a brilliant horse.

Season Ahead
We’ve plenty of horses back in work now for the National Hunt season, obviously it’s light enough work at the moment. We haven’t come up with any major plans as to where they’ll start off yet but we do have a nice bunch of horses and I’m excited for the season ahead.

Last year wasn’t a great year for Ivanovich Gorbatov but we’re really looking forward to seeing how he’ll go this season. We have a lot of nice young horses in the form of Le Richebourg, Tigris River and Housesofparliament to name a few which I’m excited about.