James Burn

Training racehorses is a young person’s game, according to some. It’s a theory that has legs; early starts, late finishes in the peak months, keeping owners happy, chasing new ones, dealing with staff and media, running the business, buying new horses - an all-encompassing, time-consuming pursuit if ever there was one. You can see why the energy of a Duracell bunny or a solid support team is needed to succeed and many owners are also said to want a trainer younger than themselves. At 41, Dan...

For all that the extraordinary Aidan O’Brien has accomplished, some say he has never trained a truly great flat horse, but could that change when Constitution River lines up at York this month? When it comes to O’Brien, whose legendary hurdler Istabraq was an undisputed jumps champion, there is a danger his best horses, to some degree, blur into one, but that’s probably because he’s trained so many. Officially, Hawk Wing, with a rating of 133, is the finest he has had through his hands with...

Not so long ago those words would have sounded crazy as racing set about crowning potentially the greatest hurdler the sport has ever known. Blessed with a bombproof temperament, he also had the engine of a jumbo jet and appeared flawless, just like flat racing’s greatest, Frankel. Ground conditions were never a problem for Michael Buckley’s superstar, who put meat on the bones by destroying the 2022 Supreme Novices’ Hurdle field at the Cheltenham Festival, drawing a whopping 22 lengths clear...