Donnacha's youthful success puts him years ahead of the rest in Classic race

Envy is a terrible sin but who wouldn't crave to be Donnacha O'Brien? Six days on from his Prix de Diane victory with Fancy Blue we should still be in a state of awe at a 21-year-old trainer landing a Classic four winners into his first year at the job, ending a 50-year gap since Ireland captured the race. But we are not in shock because the surname is O'Brien.

We have come to expect the exceptional from this family of super-achievers. We may not have reached for the superlatives straight away last Sunday because, despite some head-scratching, no-one was sure if we had ever seen the like before. So, to put Donnacha's Diane win into context, he is by far the youngest trainer to attain Classic success in the modern era in which trainers have required licences that reveal their date of birth.

Fancy that: Fancy Blue and Pierre-Charles Boudot after a hard-fought success in the Prix de Diane Longines at Chantilly on Sunday.Credit: Scoop Dyga/France Galop

He takes over that mantle from elder brother Joseph, a slow starter who did not claim a Classic until the age of 25 when Latrobe (ridden by Donnacha) landed the 2018 Irish Derby from a quartet trained by their father Aidan who was no doubt furious at being upstaged, having reached the grand old age of 27 when Desert King got him off the mark in the 1997 Irish 2,000 Guineas.