Vincent O'Brien
Vincent O'Brien, who died on June 1 aged 92 , was arguably the greatest racehorse trainer in the history of the sport.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obit...nt-OBrien.html
Nor is it easy to imagine anyone surpassing his achievements under the two codes of racing: in National Hunt, O’Brien won four Cheltenham Gold Cups, three Champion Hurdles and three consecutive Grand Nationals; when he turned his attention to the Flat, at the age of 41, he went on to take 27 Irish Classics, three Prix de l’ Arc de Triomphes and 16 English Classics, including six Epsom Derbies.
When his former stable jockey, Lester Piggott, was invited to locate O’Brien in racing’s pantheon, he replied simply: “Of course Vincent was the greatest — look at the figures.”
O’Brien’s career spanned an era in which racing changed from being merely a sporting pastime to a multi-million-pound industry, and it was a change in which this Irish trainer played no small part through his association, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with Robert Sangster and John Magnier.