Jockey Profile

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Eldest son of champion trainer Aidan, Joseph O'Brien began riding in 2009 and the following year shared the Champion Apprentice title with Gary Carroll and Ben Curtis. In 2011, he was still just 17 years of age when riding his first Classic winner on Roderic O'Connor in the Irish 2,000 Guineas at the Curragh. He won the Champion Apprentice title that season and rounded off the year by becoming the youngest jockey, at 18, to win a Breeders' Cup race when successful on St Nicholas Abbey in the Breeders' Cup Turf.

He was Champion Jockey in 2012 and easily retained his title in 2013 when he set a new record of 126 winners in a season, comfortably eclipsing Michael Kinane's 20-year-old record of 115 winners. In October, 2015, O’Brien announced that he would begin to train point-to-pointers and he rode what would prove to be his final winner at Gowran Park later in the same month. He took over the running of the family’s training establishment at Piltown, County Kilkenny, and was widely credited with the success of a number of horses, including the 2016 Triumph Hurdle winner Ivanovich Gorbatov, although his father was the official trainer. In the days before Ivanovich Gorbatov’s Cheltenham success, O’Brien had announced his retirement from riding.

In all, he had ridden 518 winners. He enjoyed 30 Group/Grade 1 winners and 10 Classic victories. Aidan and Joseph O’Brien had become the first father and son partnership to win the Epsom Derby with Camelot in 2012 and they repeated the feat just two years later when Australia won the biggest race in the Flat calendar. Joseph also rode both horses to win the Irish Derby at the Curragh. His final Classic success came on Order Of St George in the Irish St Leger in 2015. O’Brien completed the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board’s Pre-Racehorse Trainers Development Course in late May, 2016 and was granted his trainer's licence on Friday, June 3rd, 2016. Joseph returned to the saddle to win the Clipper Logistics Leger Legends Classified Stakes on the George Scott-trained Phosphorescence at Doncaster on September 7th, 2016.