There is, perhaps, no greater sign of what a person was like than how people respond to their deaths. People couldn’t have been quicker to compliment Edward O’Grady in the wake of the news of his death on the 27th of July 2025, with the overall feeling being that he was one of the finest jump racing trainers in the history of Irish racing.
He sent out just shy of 1,700 winners during his career, becoming the Champion Trainer in Ireland four times; no small feat when Willie Mullins is one of the people that you’re up against. He also enjoyed numerous big wins during the Cheltenham Festival, for which he’ll always be remembered.
About
Edward O’Grady was a native of Tipperary and based himself in Ballynonty, becoming the go-to trainer for JP McManus to send his horses to as his emergence as an owner of talented racehorses took hold. It was O’Grady who trained McManus’s Shining Flame to victory in the Galway Plate in 1978, for example, and McManus said of him after his death, “He was a great judge of horse and, on top of that, he looked after everybody who loved him so well.” Before Willie Mullins, O’Grady was Ireland’s most successful trainer at the Cheltenham Festival, winning 10 times.
It was when his father, Willie O’Grady, died in 1972 that Edward took over the family’s stables. It didn’t take long for him to register a winner, seeing Vibrax win at Gowran Park when ridden by his cousin in the same month that he was mourning his father’s passing, the January. He was caught up in controversy during the mid-1970s when he was arrested in connection with the plot known as ‘Operation Crock of Gold’, but was later cleared of any charges. His final winner came in the month of his death, with Our Soldier winning at Bellewstown. He was survived by his third wife, a son and two daughters.
Major Successes
When it comes to Edward O’Grady, it is probably easier to list the races he hasn’t won than the ones that he has. His first winner at the Cheltenham Festival, for example, came through Mr Midland in the National Hunt Chase. That was in 1974, then four years later he witnessed Golden Cygnet put in a brilliant run in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, with the horse sadly dying in the Scottish Champion Hurdle a month later. After briefly training on the flat for a period in the 1980s, he returned to jump racing and seemed to pick up where he’d left off.
He won the Coral Cup at Cheltenham with Sky’s The Limit, as well as the Whitbread Gold Cup at Sandown. Victories in the likes of the Irish Champion Hurdle and the Royal & SunAlliance Novices’ Chase also sat amongst his list of wins, whilst Sound Man won the Tingle Creek Chase in both 1995 and 1996. The Martell Cognac Aintree Hurdle win in 2003 showed that the Cheltenham Festival wasn’t the only big meeting that he could send out a winner in. Although he didn’t win any big races like the Grand National or the Gold Cup, he won plenty of smaller ones during his career.
Here is a look at just some of the races that Edward O’Grady trained the winners of at least once during his career:
- Victor Chandler Chase
- Supreme Novices’ Hurdle
- Galway Plate
- Galway Hurdle
- Whitbread Gold Cup
Horses Trained
It is fair to say that Edward O’Grady trained some exceptional horses during his career. It was only really with the advent of the super yards that O’Grady’s star began to fade, but even then he could still send out horses more than capable of getting across the line first. Drumlargan won the Whitbread Gold Cup in 1983, which the man himself described as the ‘most memorable win of my career’. In the same year, Bit of a Skite won the Irish Grand National, whilst it was Sound Man that won the back-to-back Tingle Creek Chases in the middle of the 1990s for O’Grady.
Here are some of the horses that are well-known for having come through Grady’s yard:
Gay Future
It wouldn’t be outrageous to suggest that Edward O’Grady would rather Gay Future had become known for a reason other than the plot to defraud a group of bookmakers that has forever been attached to the horse’s name. It was in 1974 that an Irish betting syndicate attempted to pull off the fraud, with a Scottish trainer called Antony Collins being involved with the Irish builder and millionaire Tony Murphy. The con took place at Cartmel Racecourse, but O’Grady was cleared of having had anything to do with it. Still, it is impossible to talk about horses in his care and not mention Gay Future.
Golden Cygnet
Thankfully, there are more than a few horses that came under O’Grady’s care that were not known because of their part in a scam. One such name is that of Golden Cygnet, who Vincent O’Brien once described as ‘the best hurdler I’ve ever seen’. The bay gelding was one of the first crop of horses out of Deep Run and won the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, the Slaney Hurdle and the Fingal Hurdle all in the year of 1978. Sadly, his hurdling career lasted less than five months on account of a fatal injury sustained during the running of the Scottish Champion Hurdle that year.
