Here is an interesting question to ask; Has Aidan O’Brien had a good year?

There are lots of metrics to suggest that by his own lofty standards, he hasn’t. Tuesday gave the Ballydoyle handler a record 41st British classic in the Oaks, but his only other classic win came from the four-year-old Kyprios in the Irish St Leger.

Though Luxembourg won the Irish Champion Stakes, he missed the majority of the season, and along with Point Lonsdale’s setback, O’Brien was without a top class three-year-old colt for much of the campaign.

Indeed, this was probably reflected in his current Group/Grade 1 total, which before last weekend was at just 11 – six short of last year.

But O’Brien and the Ballydoyle team should never be written off, and on the biggest stage of all for international racing, the Breeders’ Cup, he showed exactly why, sending out three winners across the two-day meet at Keeneland.

Tuesday’s win in the Filly & Mare Turf was the most high profile, but wins for both Victoria Road and Meditate in juvenile Grade 1s were arguably more significant.

The future

It’s always about the future at Ballydoyle. The whole process is designed to create the best stallions and broodmares around. Naturally, the former is the most lucrative.

The conveyor belt of quality must always keep rolling at Ballydoyle to service a highly competitive breeding world and the death of the generational sire Galileo, has heaped pressure on O’Brien and his team to facilitate new alternatives for the market.

When Luxembourg won the Group 1 Vertem Futurity in Doncaster last October, he was giving O’Brien and the Coolmore partners their first Group 1 with a juvenile colt all season.

The relief in the winners’ enclosure afterwards was palpable.

After last weekend, Victoria Road’s win in the Juvenile Turf meant O’Brien had four individual two-year-old colt Group 1 winners.

Of this quartet, Auguste Rodin, this year’s Futurity winner, looks just about the pick over runaway Phoenix Stakes winner Little Big Bear.

Auguste Rodin is out of a Galileo mare and by Deep Impact, the brilliant Japanese sire who sadly passed away last year.

That makes him a truly unique commodity and he is already favourite for the 2000 Guineas and Derby next season.