HOW CAN WE KNOW WHO IS CURRENTLY THE VERY BEST TRAINER & MENTAL HEALTH.

The O'Briens, father and two sons, currently hold 3 of the top six positions in the Irish Trainers' Championship table, with Joseph top and Aidan second. The father, of course, has reigned as Irish champion for the past twenty-years or more. Being champion is what Aidan does; I dare say when he was driving a fork-lift for the Co-Op he was, if only in his own mind, the champion at stacking pallets. Recently, going against the grain of popular opinion, I suggested that Joseph was perhaps the top trainer in the world right now and though not expecting readers to take my opinion strictly seriously, if you go by the diversity of the top races he wins, as well as his success abroad, Joseph is unique if he isn't the best in the world.

But that is just opinion; there is no real formula for deciding such accolades. Yes, Aidan wins classic races in Ireland, Britain and France - he added the French 1,000 guineas to his haul only yesterday - with the regularity of a well-maintained clock and in that department alone he is untouchable. Yet his son trains under both codes and is as successful in one as he is in the other and if Ben Jones had taken a breath after the third from home in the Aintree National instead of going hell for leather, Joseph could have easily added yet another great triumph to his bulging c.v.

Perhaps a possible, though unlikely ever to happen, way to determine in the short time the best trainer in Europe might be for someone to purchase at auction a half-dozen of the poorest horses at the sale (there are only six contenders, I believe, perhaps even fewer) and drawn by lots one each is allocated to the lucky six, with the title of 'the world's greatest' awarded to the trainer who can achieve the most improvement from his horse in a single season. This is the sort of concept, as unlikely as it could ever happen, that would excite interest and intrigue amonst racing devotees and would, perhaps, reach the national daily papers and the looser sections of mainstream broadcasting.

One of the six trainers I would nominate for this fictitious competition would be Willie Mullins, a legitimate candidate now he is a Breeders' Cup winning trainer, though during the summer months he would be at a disavantage due to his best jumps horses being out-to-grass and unable to tow along the stable's representative for the competition up the gallops. I have this theory that the form of a horse will always improve when they are transferred to a trainer like Mullins, Henderson, Gosden or Joseph O'Brien (horses rarely get transferred into Ballydoyle as largely it is a home-bred operation) as on a daily basis they are being asked to gallop with horses of far greater ability and due to their innate honesty and wish to please they will work harder and thus become fitter than when worked with horses of their own ability.

It would be interesting to see how much an O'Brien or Mullins could improve a 40-rated horse, if at all.

In his column today, Lee Mottershead replies to a Sky News feature on whether the sport does enough to support the mental health of jockeys. The Sky News journalist sought to prove that the sport does not do enough, coming to this conclusion without interviewing anyone for the Injured Jockeys Fund or the Professional Jockeys Association. I will not quote the data Lee Mottershead uses to disprove the assertions of Sky News, though I recommend people read for themselves Mottershead's wonderfully composed article, and will only say that if the help provided to jockeys on this aspect of health as well as the treatment they receive when they break bones is lacking, then I would like to be told which other sports do more.

In many ways, and I hope experts in the subject do not think I am undermining the subject of mental health, though talking to someone is the best opening gambit in getting back to a healthy mind-set, I believe acceptance of the problem is the most important element and then finding something in life that flicks the switch and allows the brain to concentrate on more positive aspects of life. For me, writing this blog keeps my mind balanced and I only wish this was the path I had taken much earlier in my life. I could never have been become on the same level as Lee Mottershead or Patrick Mullins (jockey or writer) but I would have been a lot happier through life and made better life decisions.