Juan-Carlos Capelli, Vice President of Longines and Head of International Marketing, as well as Louis Romanet, Chairman of the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities (IFHA), and Brian Kavanagh, Chief Executive of Horse Racing Ireland, will take part in the ceremony on Tuesday 14 August in Dublin. This coincided with the launch of the 2018 Longines Irish Champions Weekend, which will take place at Leopardstown Racecourse on Saturday 15 September and the Curragh Racecourse on Sunday 16 September. As the Official Partner and Official Watch of the IFHA, Longines and the IFHA jointly created the Award of Merit in 2013 in order to honor public figures for their outstanding contribution to the world of horse racing.
The Magnier family and trainer Aidan O’Brien, the driving forces behind Coolmore and Ballydoyle Racing Stable, have been selected as the recipients of the 2018 Longines and IFHA International Award of Merit, which recognizes distinguished horsemen and horsewomen for lifelong contributions to Thoroughbred racing.
Coolmore is a name synonymous with global success at the highest level, both as a breeding and racing entity. The world-renowned operation came together when John Magnier joined forces with Ballydoyle trainer Vincent O’Brien and business magnate Robert Sagster in the 1970s. The partnership’s first major winner was The Minstrel in the 1977 Epsom Derby, and its first major homebred was Sadler’s Wells. A top-class racehorse, upon his retirement Sadler’s Wells rewrote the stud books by becoming the 14-time leading sire in Great Britain and Ireland.
Magnier is married to Vincent O’Brien’s daughter Susan, and they have five children—Tom, Kate, JP, MV and Sammy Jo. He acquired both Ballydoyle and Coolmore after O’Brien’s retirement and Sangster’s death.
Aidan O’Brien (no relation to Vincent) became the trainer at Ballydoyle in 1996. That year, Coolmore’s Desert King provided him with his first Group 1 winner on the Flat in the National Stakes at the Curragh. O’Brien had taken out his trainer’s license in 1993 and got his start with National Hunt horses, most notably the legendary Istabraq, a son of Sadler’s Wells.
Another son of Sadler’s Wells, Coolmore’s Galileo, would give O’Brien his first of six Epsom Derby winners and would go on to become one of the premier stallions in history. In 2016, European Horse of the Year Minding, a daughter of Galileo, gave O'Brien his 250th Group/Grade 1 winner on the flat when taking the Qipco 1000 Guineas at Newmarket. In 2017, Highland Reel, a son of Galileo, gave O’Brien his 300th Group/Grade 1 winner (flat and National Hunt combined) by winning the Prince of Wales's Stakes at Royal Ascot, which was timed by Longines.
Last year, with 28 Group/Grade 1 victories, O’Brien broke the world record for Group/Grade 1 wins in a single season by a trainer, besting Bobby Frankel's mark of 25 set in 2003. He has been crowned champion Irish Flat trainer in terms of prize-money won every season since 1999 and has won Group/Grade 1 races across the globe, including in Australia, Canada, France, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States. The majority of O’Brien’s big-race winners have carried the colours of the Coolmore partners to victory.
O’Brien and his wife, Annemarie, have four children—Joseph, Sarah, Ana and Donnacha—and all of them became jockeys. In 2012, O'Brien and Joseph became the first father-son/trainer-jockey pair to win the Epsom Derby with Coolmore’s Camelot. In 2018, Joseph, now a trainer, defeated his father in the Irish Derby with Latrobe. Brother Donnacha was in the irons.
Previous winners of the Longines and IFHA International Award of Merit include Yutaka Take, the Romanet family, Jim Bolger, Alec Head, Seth Hancock, and the late Marcel Zarour Atanacio.
