Racing world mourns Dream Horse jockey O’Brien

THE racing world is in mourning after the death at just 39 of Tom O'Brien – the Irish jockey who rode perhaps the most romantic ever winner of the Coral Welsh Grand National, immortalised in hit film Dream Horse.

O'Brien's ride to victory on Dream Alliance in 2009 was the stuff of legend – a horse bought by South Wales villagers for £350 and raised on a slag heap allotment.

It wasn't the jockey’s only Coral Welsh National success at Chepstow either, repeating the trick on Elegant Escape in 2018.

But it was the triumph immortalised in the movie – shot in Blaenavon, the Glanusk estate and at the racecourse itself – that most captured the imagination, the winner having been bought and funded by a syndicate of Cefn Fforest villagers, after working men's club barmaid Janet Vokes and her husband Brian persuaded locals to get involved.

Having been reared on a Blackwood allotment, Dream Alliance was later moved to trainer Philip Hobbs' Minehead yard, only to suffer a life-threatening tendon injury at Aintree in 2008.

The horse could have been put down, but the villagers refused to let him die and stumped up the cash for a revolutionary stem cell operation and 15 months of rehabilitation.

And five months after resuming training, O'Brien and the 20/1 outsider stunned the racing world to miraculously win Wales' most prestigious race by 3/4L.

Nine years later, O'Brien was in the winner's enclosure again, winning the National for a second time on Colin Tizzard's 3/1 favourite Elegant Escape by 1 1/4L.

His career included five Grade 1 wins and two at the Cheltenham Festival, including Third Wind in the Pertemps Final in 2022, the year before he retired.

Chepstow Racecourse posted on Wednesday: "Today we remember jockey Tom O’Brien who has sadly died, aged just 39, from cancer.

"Tom was a much-admired and respected mainstay of the Jump jockeys’ changing room over 19 seasons riding more than 1,000 winners.

"Champion Amateur and Champion Conditional, Tom then turned professional with a huge portfolio of winners, including two Coral Welsh Grand Nationals.

"Following his retirement from the saddle in 2023 he became a BHA Stipendiary Steward.

"We send our condolences and very best wishes to his wife Hayley and their two children Archie and Toby, to the rest of Tom’s family and his many friends. The Jump racing community will always remember Tom."

Jockeys racing across the country, including Champion Jump Jockey and 2025 Welsh National winner Sean Bowen, held a minute's silence in memory of O'Brien.

Phillip Hobbs, who the jockey rode for his whole career, said: "He rode an awful lot of winners for us and we had great times, but it's just very sad that his life has been taken from him so early."

Dream Horse brought the heart-warming rags to riches tale of Dream Alliance to the big screen five years after the release of a documentary about the unlikely winner.

The film starred Oscar-nominated Australian actress Toni Collette, who called it "the most perfect underdog story of all time", alongside Damian Lewis, Owen Teale, Sian Phillips, Peter Davison and Gavin & Stacey’s Joanna Page.