For a country of its size, Ireland has an extraordinary hold over British horse racing. Its breeders, owners and trainers punch well above their weight, and Irish yards have made a habit of beating the British on their own turf. The clearest measure of that comes at the Cheltenham Festival, where the Prestbury Cup keeps a running score of Irish-trained winners against British-trained ones every March.
Ireland won that contest 15-13 in 2026, its seventh victory in a row, having taken it 20-8 the year before and 23-5 in 2021. The yards responsible for that dominance are scattered across the Irish countryside, from Tipperary and Carlow to the farmland of Meath and Waterford. Some of the names below also feature on our main famous trainers page, but here the focus is very much on their Irish roots and their records in their home country.
Willie Mullins
Paddy Mullins, Willie’s father, was one of the great figures of Irish racing in his own right, carrying on training until he was 86. Willie learned plenty from him, but when he wanted a licence of his own in 1988, he had a problem. The authorities expected a trainer to have a certain number of horses, with Mullins since owning up to bending the truth about how many he had under his care in order to gain his licence. It didn’t take long to justify the fib, as Silver Bachelor gave him his first winner at Thurles only a few weeks after his licence had been granted.
In the years since, the Carlow yard has turned into a winning machine on home soil. On Easter Sunday 2024, Mullins sent out a seven-timer that was split between Fairyhouse and Cork, taking his tally for the season to 238 and breaking the Irish record of 237 that he had set 12 months earlier. Leopardstown’s Irish Gold Cup has been his race more than anyone’s, with 15 wins by the summer of 2026, whilst he had also won the Punchestown Gold Cup eight times by then, making the big Irish spring prizes something that Mullins all but hoovered up.
His win in the 2025-2026 title race came late, as he was still chasing Gordon Elliott going into the Punchestown Festival. He had the first three home in the Punchestown Gold Cup that week and hit the front of the running with three days to spare. Two months later, the Royal Dublin Society made him an Honorary Life Member.
Aidan O’Brien
Aidan O’Brien met his future wife, Anne-Marie, in the most Irish of ways, as the pair were circling at the start of a bumper at Galway. She was already a Champion Jumps Trainer by the time he took over her licence, and the family has stayed in the saddle since then. All four of their children have ridden a winner for their father, with Joseph going on to become Ireland’s Champion Jockey before making the decision to turn to training himself. Anne-Marie has also ridden a number of winners for her husband over the years.
Before flat racing took over his life, O’Brien was very much a jumps man. In 1995, for example, he saddled the first three home in the Galway Plate. Ballydoyle sits at Ferthard, near Rosegreen, in a beautiful spot beneath Slievenamon, already being famous long before he arrived thanks to Vincent O’Brien, who is, believe it or not, no relation. By the summer of 2024, Aidan had been Ireland’s Champion Flat Trainer 17 years in a row and had won 51 Irish Classics.
No Irish race shows his grip on the sport better than the Irish Derby at the Curragh. Galileo gave him a famous Epsom and Curragh double in 2001, with Camelot adding another in 2012 and Benvenuto Cellini making it 18 wins in the race in the June of 2026, the fourth win for O’Brien in a row.
Gordon Elliott
Gordon Elliott is a Meath man through and through, but it took Irish racing a while to warm to him as a trainer. His first five winners all came in Britain, which meant that he was already a big name across the Irish Sea before he had managed to saddle a winner at home. That finally changed on the fifth of May 2007, when Toran Road won at Kilbeggan, a small midlands track that hardly fits the image of the powerhouse trainer that he would become. From there, the growth in his County Meath yard was a rapid one.
By the 2016-2017 season, Elliott was sending out 193 Irish winners, matching what was then the record for a single campaign, leading the Top Trainer title race until the penultimate day, when Willie Mullins edged past him. He went better again the following season, notching up 210 winners. On Easter Monday 2018, he saddled 13 of the 30 runners in the Irish Grand National at Fairyhouse, with the 20/1 shot General Principle giving him a first win in the race.
The Irish title is the one big prize that is still missing from his record. He has been runner-up to Mullins 13 times. At the end of the March of 2026, he was over €350,000 clear, only to be reeled in once again during the final week of the season. Of all of the trainers on the list, Elliott is unquestionably the most controversial, behaving in such a way that he was given a ban by Irish racing after posing for a photo on the body of a dead horse.
Henry de Bromhead
Henry de Bromhead trains at Knockeen in County Waterford, which is the same yard where his father, Harry, sent out Fissure Seal to win at the Cheltenham Festival in 1993. Henry was originally set for a career in accountancy, but he gave that up for racing and gained experience with Robert and Sally Alner, with Sir Mark Prescott and at Coolmore Stud in Tipperary. He took over the licence from his father at the turn of the millennium, and his first winner came at Tramore on New Year’s Day 2000, when Fidalus won a hurdle race at the Waterford track.
Sizing Europe’s win in the Irish Champion Hurdle at Leopardstown in 2008 was the moment that put Knockeen on the map, but it was the partnership with Rachael Blackmore that made de Bromhead a household name in the sport. Honeysuckle won the Irish Champion Hurdle three years running from 2020 to 2022, and by her third win she was unbeaten in 14 starts. In 2021, de Bromhead became the first trainer ever to win the Champion Hurdle, the Champion Chase and the Gold Cup at the same Cheltenham Festival.
A few weeks later, Minella Times won the Grand National at Aintree with Blackmore on board, making her the first woman to ride the winner, with de Bromhead also saddling the runner-up. His father lived to see all of it, before dying in the July of 2023 at the age of 86.
Gavin Cromwell
Like Gordon Elliott, Gavin Cromwell is a Meath man whose route into training was a little different from most. He started out as a stable lad with Dessie Hughes on the Curragh, then spent time in Newmarket and at Flemington in Australia whilst chasing a career as a jockey. When that didn’t work out, he qualified as a farrier and built up a busy business shoeing horses for other yards, Gordon Elliott’s amongst them. He took out a training licence in 2005, living in a one-bedroom flat above eight stables on a 14-acre site with a short gallop.
His first winner came in a hurdle race at Cork on the seventh of April 2007, when Dodder Walk scored under Andrew Lynch. The yard at Danestown, near Navan, has grown a long way since then, with room for around 150 horses. By the end of 2023, he sat fourth in the Irish trainers’ table behind only Mullins, Elliott and de Bromhead, which is some going for a relatively small yard. Espoir D’Allen gave him the Champion Hurdle in 2019, whilst Flooring Porter won the Christmas Hurdle at Leopardstown in 2020 before taking the Stayers’ Hurdle at Cheltenham in both 2021 and 2022.
The biggest win of them all came in 2025, when Inothewayurthinkin won the Cheltenham Gold Cup, beating the Mullins-trained Galopin Des Champs into second. Cromwell is just as handy on the flat, with Quick Suzy landing the Queen Mary at Royal Ascot in 2021.