Joseph O’Brien grabs Group One glory as jockey and now trainer at Royal Ascot

Joseph O’Brien was still in the winner’s enclosure talking to reporters after winning the Prince of Wales’s Stakes with State Of Rest here on Wednesday as the jockeys came out for the next race. “Thanks, Mickaël,” he said as Mickaël Barzalona offered his congratulations, a reminder that O’Brien himself was in weighing room and competing against many of this week’s riders as recently as June 2015.

O’Brien rode six winners at Royal Ascot during his brief few years as stable jockey to his father, Aidan, including So You Think in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes a decade ago and Leading Light in the Gold Cup, the meeting’s most historic event, in 2014.

But his achievements since hanging up his boots to take out a trainer’s licence have been astonishing. Two Melbourne Cup winners in four years between 2017 to 2020, an Irish Derby and a St Leger have been among the major highlights – and O’Brien is still 11 months shy of his 30th birthday.

State Of Rest’s 5-1 victory here on Wednesday was another landmark, as O’Brien is the first person to both ride and train a Group One winner at Royal Ascot since the Pattern system was introduced in 1971. This was also his first winner at the meeting, after a run of 43 losers stretching back to 2016, and it arrived thanks to a pre-race plan to “uncomplicate things” according to Shane Crosse, the winner’s 20-year-old jockey, who executed to perfection.

Shahryar, attempting to become Japan’s first Royal winner, has made the running in the past but Cristian Demuro was happy to take a lead from State Of Rest as Crosse set a steady pace through the first three-quarters of a mile. Demuro seemed poised to pick off the leader in the straight but when Crosse asked State Of Rest to lengthen, he soon