Joseph Patrick O'Brien to cut his jumping string
Joseph O'Brien
Joseph O'Brien has had plenty of success on the flat and over jumps but it seems that his future is on one level after deciding to trim his national hunt string.
Joseph Patrick O'Brien's father Aidan was famously a dual-purpose trainer, sending out both winners of the Champion Hurdle and the Epsom Derby.
Like his old man, Joseph O'Brien has decided to focus on his flat operation and will begin to wind down his national hunt string.
The ex-jockey has had plenty of success training horses over jumps, including winning an Irish Gold Cup with Edwulf and handling Le Richebourg and Fakir D'oudairies to take several Grade 1 titles.
But, O'Brien indicates that his jumping portfolio has already been cut and will dwindle further in future years.
He said: "We actually had nearly our best jumps year of all last year, but I won't have a lot of jumpers I'd say for the next few years.
"We had a good summer, but a lot of those horses were sold and moved on. I think we have 20 jumpers left and we'll probably have that for next year, but I don't believe you can do both on a big scale without them having a little impact on each other.
"We have a big number of stables and horses here and I didn't want to build any more stables, so you have to concentrate on one or the other then and obviously I grew up on the Flat and it makes a lot more sense to have Flat horses than jumpers.
"I'd say I'll always have a few homebreds. We've done well with some homebred fillies that have sneaked a bit of black type that will then breed a couple of bumper horses that we'll race to sell.
"And I won't be able to help myself by running a few three-year-olds (over hurdles)!"
Fakir D'oudairies swerved Cheltenham and will instead be brought up to the boil for the Melling Chase at Aintree next week
"Fakir is in great nick," O'Brien added.
"We trained him with the thought that we could go to Cheltenham, but JP (McManus) and Frank (Berry) felt it made more sense to go to Aintree and so did I - if you were taking on Allaho you're probably running for second realistically and looking at the race that's probably what we would have been doing.
"We're going to Aintree with a fresh horse and if Allaho turns up, we'll take him on there."
