Racing is in its own bubble said trainer Jamie Osborne after his daughter Saffie (24) became the first woman to win a Classic, the 250th St Leger on Highwayman. That bubble should have exploded across news media headlines – but not, it seems, when it had to compete with the new football season, Test cricket and motoring`s Grand Prix.

And it would be completely wrong to suggest Aidan O`Brien`s bubble has burst after a succession of setbacks including those with his Epsom, Irish and French Derby winners Christmas Day, Pierre Bonnard and Constitution River. Saffie Osborne`s exploit and the monopoly of three Group One races on the Curragh card by the O`Brien family, father and two sons, all winning a Group One on the same card, should have kicked lesser headlines – the continued decline of Manchester United a preoccupation - off the ‘front page`. Briefly, very briefly they did in a couple of instances – and then? Racing`s bubble was blown away.


A few days later and even racing`s trade paper, the Post, was back to its diet of bookmaker closures and the frightening prospect of betting tax rises. Sure they`re happening and they`ll be disastrous for the game if something isn`t done but if racing is to survive the positives have to be accentuated.

In not much more than an hour the O`Brien family took over at the Curragh, even as Aidan O`Brien (59) felt obliged to excuse an uncharacteristic crop of defeats elsewhere. The scion of the O`Brien dynasty took the seven furlong 235,000 euros Moyglare Stud Stakes for two-year-old fillies with Sun Goddess (Sioux Nation-Etoile Bleu by Starspangledbanner). Next up was eldest son Joseph (33), who will surely follow his old man as champion trainer (not how but when), landed the 235,000 euros, seven furlong Vincent O`Brien Stakes with Folsom Blues (Blue Point-Liwa Palace by Oasis Dream); and youngest son Donnacha (28) completed the treble in the five furlong Flying Five Stakes for 3yo and upwards, 235,000 euros, with Comanche Brave (Wootton Bassett-Ishvana by Holy Roman Emperor).

Aidan O`Brien has eighteen Group Ones this season, threatening his own record of twenty-eight in a calendar year. Yet we are coming to the apex of the season when the huge sums to be won on Champions Day at Ascot on October 17 are so meaningful in deciding the British trainer`s championship that the few thousands between O`Brien and his challenger Andrew Balding, sets us up for a tense final month. The huge international prizes associated with the Prix de l`Arc de Triomphe in France, Breeders` Cup in America, Japan Cup in Tokyo and Melbourne Cup in Australia are not currencies that play a part in determining who is champion in Britain. And if O`Brien has more cards to play than Balding; the latter has the momentum.

Aidan O`Brien has been champion eight times in the UK (and every year in Ireland since 1999) but the threatening challenge from Balding would be oh so appropriate in the year of his father Ian`s death. Ian Balding was champion in 1971 largely through the exploits of Mill Reef. Andrew, with over two hundred horses in training, has been gathering winners across the board.

There have been dynasties in former days. O`Brien is still four short of Alec Taylor`s dozen titles early in the last century and the Hannons (Richard Junior still pitching) and the Day`s in the nineteenth century were repeated champions. Their locations were within a few miles of one another on the Hampshire Downs. The big difference nowadays is the international attraction – the Prix de l`Arc in Paris on October 4, is worth five million euros; the forthcoming Melbourne Cup`s prize package is over five million Australian dollars. Here there`s a fact that leaves one incredulous – Joseph O`Brien has ten entries in the Cup! He has already won it twice – his father not yet.

Of more immediate concern for O`Brien is the persistent Balding challenge – the Irishman`s horses, by his own admission, are currently not on song at the moment. Now Diamond Necklace and Minnie Hauk, the latter third last year in the Arc but bowing twice to Balding`s Kalpana this year, are double figure odds for the Arc, a market for the highest-rated race in the world seemingly in the grip of France`s all-conquering trainer Francis-Henri Graffard`s 2025 winner Daryaz.

And the more one contemplates the big day in Paris as a forgone conclusion for Daryaz – as short as 9-4 in the ante-post betting – the more one marvels at the story for the ages - Saffie Osborne`s victory at Doncaster in the oldest classic, the 250th St Leger worth £375,000 to the winner. The first Classic victory won by a female rider in racing`s long history (the St Leger is the oldest Classic) is more than a fact for the encyclopaedias. The first professional ride by a woman in the UK was in 1978 and it was nearly twenty years before the same woman, Alex Greaves, became the first woman to ride a Group One winner – in the Nunthorpe Stakes. And she was the first woman to ride in the Derby – on a 500-1 shot Portuguese Lil who finished last.

In 2008 Hayley Turner became the first female to ride a hundred winners in a season and latterly Hollie Doyle, the winning-most female jockey, and of the first European Group One for a female jockey, with Nashwa in the Prix de Diane, and once nominated for Sports Personality of the Year, more than holds her own against the top male riders with a record 162 wins in a calendar year. She had a career threatening horrendous injury in May this year.

The first woman to ride professionally against men was Diane Crump in America in 1969. She had to be shepherded by police through a mob of angry misogynistic race fans. The Doncaster crowds parted to applaud Saffie Osborne back to the weigh-in.

We`ve had the first victory by a female rider at Royal Ascot through the now retired Hayley Turner and Saffie Osborne captained the winning team in this year`s Shergar Cup, also at Ascot. Like Hollie Doyle, Osborne suffered a serious injury last year which interrupted her rise which began only five years ago, but such is the impression she has made this season that Joseph O`Brien had no hesitation calling her up for Highwayman (Persian King-Salyana by Harlans Holiday) in the St Leger. Osborne was on the outsider of the Joseph O`Brien hopes but at no longer odds than 11-1 and Highwayman was no makeweight or pacemaker. The pair won comfortably by over two lengths from the other, shorter-priced stablemate Enceladus with champion jockey elect Billy Loughnane aboard. Father Aidan O`Brien`s four runners were left trailing.

Osborne, rightly, is adamant that her gender isn`t a factor in the opportunities she gets. Her agent, Tony Hind, already has three former champions on his books: Ryan Moore, William Buick, Richard Hughes and is about to have a fourth in Billy Loughnane. It isn`t unthinkable that Saffie Osborne could be Hind`s fifth.

“I don`t feel like in my position now that I`m ever looked at any differently because I`m a woman,” said Osborne. “It takes years to gain respect and be looked at as a person that people would want to use. Hopefully Saturday will open more doors,” said the articulate and engaging jockey. “I don`t think I`m viewed any differently within the industry. I`m ‘one of the lads` in the weighing room, and I`ve never experienced sexism and misogyny.

She has ridden nearly seventy winners since the start of May, and sits eighth in the Flat Jockeys Championship. “You wouldn`t be a jockey if you didn`t want to be champion jockey. This is the first year that maybe I truly believe that I could be one day,” she said.

To be fair a top-class female jockey starts with an advantage that nobody in these egalitarian days wants to be regarded as ant-feminist and their exploits do get extra publicity – if only, on racing`s behalf, it were greater and more consistent. The injuries to Doyle and Osborne could have happened to any jockey.

Osborne dealt with her emotions in a feminine way. She punched the air passing the post and admitted afterwards: “I burst into tears. Before the race when I saw it was the 250th I thought there has to be a good story this year and surely a girl winning it would be quite a good story!

“This is the kind of thing that changes your life. No-one can ever take it away from you.”

Highwayman was a second Leger winner for the trainer following Galileo Chrome in 2020.

“I didn`t even have a ride in the Leger at the start of the week,” said Osborne. “He`s obviously trained by an absolute master in Joseph and it`s a real honour just to pick up the ride, let alone win a Classic.”

Osborne had never previously ridden a winner at higher than Group 3 level yet found her first win in top company was not hard fought. “I hit the front sooner than I planned, if I was going to hit the front. I felt Billy Loughnane come to my girths and he went again. I crossed the line and I`ve never celebrated before but I`ve never won a race good enough to celebrate in!”

Joseph O`Brien said: “It`s special. It`s a historic race and to have the first and second is very special. He was a slow learner but he won his maiden well by nine lengths and then won the Listed race and put himself in the race, because we didn`t have many other options.

“Saffie gave him a great ride. It was her first ride for us. With riders all over the place (there were six meetings in Britain and Ireland on Leger day) we were delighted to be able to get her,” said the trainer.

Osborne said: “After Royal Ascot, it was tough. There were a few weeks where it felt really hard.” She was referring to her ride on Touleen in the Coronation Stakes Gr1 at Royal Ascot when she attracted criticism for finishing second – despite dividing two fillies` Classic winners.

“Touleen was one of those moments where I sat there and felt, ‘when is this going to go right for me?`. I think fear of failure has always driven me.”

Touleen, under other jockeys, hasn`t won since.

There`s a lot going off in the world but this was a moment in history that deserved recording. I put the O`Brien family achievement first – but only to conclude with the truly momentous event of the week – the Osborne St Leger. That`s a personal view. Would that it was more widely held.

But Aidan O`Brien cannot be entirely excluded from any racing episode: Saffie Osborne`s first months in racing were spent under the master`s eye at Coolmore.