Cyril “Joe” O’Brien

  • Type: Athlete
  • Sport(s): Horse Racing
  • Year: 2018

Cyril “Joe” O’Brien (June 25, 1917 – September 29, 1984) was a Harness racing driver, trainer and owner who won the U.S. Trotting Triple Crown in 1955 and would be inducted into both the U.S. Harness Racing Hall of Fame and the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame, as well as Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame. Noted for his quiet dignity and diplomacy, he is considered one of the greatest harness horsemen in history… and a pioneer in the sub-2 minute mile.

His father was involved in the breeding and racing of Standard-breds and it would become part of Joe’s life at an early age. He was just 16 years old when he won his first harness race at a Summerside track. After finishing school, instead of going to veterinary college as his mother wanted, in the fall of 1935 he chose to go to work as a trainer in NS. Within a few years Joe O’Brien had become a dominant force in racing in the Maritime Provinces, leading all drivers in wins for five straight years from 1943 through 1947 and at Truro Raceway won a record-shattering 11 races on a single race card. In 1947 he led all drivers in North America with 128 wins but the United States Trotting Association did not recognize the 44 races he won in the Maritime Provinces and gave him a National ranking of 7th in the USTA standings. During 1947 Joe O’Brien headed to Del Mar, California where before long he would be hired to drive and train for the West Coast division of Castleton Farms racing stable. O’Brien would soon gain national recognition when he drove and trained the Castleton pacer Indian Land to victory in the then rich $50,000 Golden West Pace at Hollywood Park Racetrack.

Joe O’Brien had won numerous major races and in 1954 he drove Scott Frost  to victory in a time of two minutes flat making him the first two-year-old in the world achieve such a winning time. In 1955 O’Brien and Scott Frost won the Hambletonian Stakes, the Yonkers Trot and the Kentucky Futurity giving him the USA Trotting Triple Crown. In a remarkable three years of racing, Scott Frost would be voted the 1954 United States Two-Year-Old Trotter of the Year and the 1955 and 1956 United States Harness Horse of the Year. In 1958, again for Sol Camp, O’Brien won the Little Brown Jug with Shadow Wave. He would win that most prestigious race for pacers again in 1973 with Melvin’s Woe to go along with another Hambletonian in 1960 with Sol Camp’s Blaze Hanover, making it his second win in the most prestigious race for trotters. In 1969, Joe O’Brien became the first driver in history to have won the Hambletonian and Sweden’s Elitloppet. Through 2016, only John Campbell has matched that feat.  In 1963, Joe O’Brien was hired by the Armstrong breeding and racing operations near Brampton, ON for whom he developed the great Armbro Flight, Armbro Nesbit and Armbro Ranger.

Breaking the two-minute barrier worldwide:

Competing in the 1960s and 1970s, when a winning time of less two minutes was the paragon of excellence, on October 1, 1971 Joe O’Brien drove Steady Star to a World Record of 1:52 in a time trial at The Red Mile. On May 27, 1973 at Solvalla Racetrack in Sweden, O’Brien produced the first ever sub two-minute mile in the history of European harness racing when he won the second heat of the world-famous Elitloppet with Flower Child. Over a period of nine days in October O’Brien beat the two-minute mile clocking a total of 10 times. Even more remarkable, in 1975 he set a World Record by winning 44 sub-two-minute mile races and 32 two-minute mile races.

Joe O’Brien is also member of the PEI Sports Hall of Fame.