‘Patience, not panic’ – How Bart Cummings’s life lessons underpin Danny O’Brien’s training philosophy

Danny O’Brien had never heard the biblical story of why Bart Cummings became so patient. The telling of it makes O’Brien chuckle and reflect on the man whose legendary lack of urgency shaped the way he trained horses.

Cummings was said to have been a fairly highly strung 12-year-old who slipped off the Glenelg Jetty and disappeared into the bubbles.

He came out different from when he went in. It had been a good two minutes. The kid who dragged Cummings out of the abyss was awarded a bravery medal.

They say Cummings went in full of beans and came out permanently quiet, circumspect and methodical, important traits in becoming the greatest of all trainers.

The legendary horseman set the template for achieving the long-term targets, the Cups, Oaks and Derbies.

Slow and steady wins the race.

“Ha, not sure I’ve ever heard that story but I guess it all makes sense,” O’Brien said of the jetty tale.

O’Brien was raised on a farm at Kyabram in northern Victoria, where patriarch Peter was town doctor and a hobby horse trainer and breeder. O’Brien would later board at Xavier College but in horses he was schooled by just one trainer; two if you count the town Doc.

He was in his late teens and not particularly interested in pursuing his Law/Commerce degree at Monash University. A few dung-shovelling weekends at Cummings‘s Flemington stable led to a career in training, indoctrinated by Cummings and his lack of urgency.

“You pick up things along the way but I only learned from one trainer and it was Bart,” he said.

Cummings won nine VRC Oaks, O’Brien has one and perhaps a second this week. Getta Good Feeling is a raging $1.80 favourite.

Like Cummings, O’Brien has had significant success with staying fillies, even winning an ATC Australian Derby with one of them, Shamrocker.

Cummings knew, and O’Brien learned that if you take your time with a scopey filly, you will be rewarded because few others attribute the same effort. “It can be a shallow pool if you’ve got the right filly,” O’Brien said.

So You Think was arguably Bart’s final masterpiece, and the now late stallion has left O’Brien with perhaps his next in his filly, Getta Good Feeling.

The two years O’Brien spent with Cummings in the early 1990s, before he joined James Riley as a foreman, were an era of famine then feast. Cummings had been in a major rut.

During O‘Brien’s period with Cummings, the Cups King was almost wiped out by an $8 million yearling-related debt. He avoided bankruptcy by the skin of his teeth and fought back to win five more Melbourne Cups.

The glory era of Let’s Elope, Love Comes To Town and Muirfield Village would come but when O’Brien started working full-time for Bart and Leon Corstens up on the Flemington hill, the cupboard was empty.

“The first 12 months with Bart we barely trained a winner,” he said.

“Leon took Frontier Boy to Tasmania and Bart was filthy because, I don’t know, he thought Tassie was beneath him but Frontier Boy won the (1993) Hobart Cup and we celebrated like we’d won the Melbourne Cup,” he said.

O’Brien would also experience lean patches of his own as he focused on far-off goals and endured “three years of being in court” before being cleared of cobalt administration.

The cobalt saga that ended in 2017 had left O’Brien with a diminished stable of just 30 horses. Clients unsure of his future found other trainers. The Barwon Heads training farm was closed for a year.

O’Brien learned from Cummings to play the long game.

His stable recovered slowly but surely from the mental and financial toll of the cobalt saga. There was no rush to make up for lost time.

“I’ve been around long enough to be patient and not panic. Think three, six months, a year ahead. You can’t be influenced by trying to get a winner every Saturday. Back yourself to come through again,” O’Brien said.

There had always been a hint of “Bart” about O’Brien in both personality and training philosophy. The Classics were always front of mind even if that meant taking the long road, while others were on the freeway.

“You’ve got to train according to your personality and I guess I’m not in a rush. I worked for Bart for two years and I learned a lot but I think I was always a bit the same by nature,” he said.

“If you want to aim up at the early two-year-old races you have to push, push, push right from the moment you buy them. Gai’s are being broken in very soon after coming home from the yearling sales.

“It works for some but for me it means your finger is always hovered over the button, you’re running to a tight timetable.

“I like to give them 18 months to find their feet. I’m always happy to send them to the races and not worry too much if they’re able to win. Get them chilled and relaxed. It worked for Bart.”

O’Brien is now 55 and no longer one of racing’s up-and-comers; a youthful veteran with a grand final CV that means other stables are always wary of him.

Few of his 23 Group 1 winners feature in “iffy” Group One lists. Like Cummings, O’Brien tends to win the big ones; Melbourne Cup (Vow And Declare), Caulfield Cup (Master O’Reilly), Cox Plate (Shamus Award), Australian Derby (Shamrocker), Australian Guineas (Shamus Award) and ATC Australian Oaks (El Patroness).

O’Brien is also a legacy trainer. Three of his best colts, sprinters Shamexpress and Star Witness and Cox Plate winner Shamus Award, became influential sires.

The Everest winner Ka Ying Rising is a son of Shamexpress. Shamus Award gave us Caulfield Cup hero Incentivise. Star Witness produced multiple Group 1 winner Global Glamour and is the damsire of another Everest winner Bella Nipotina.

Russian Camelot was probably O’Brien’s best and most frustrating horse and his progeny are showing talent. 

But O’Brien admits running Russian Camelot in the 2020 Melbourne Cup, where he ran eighth but bowed a tendon, was “the error of my training career”.

“It does feel like you’ve left a fingerprint on them,” he said of his stud graduates.

“I’ve been really pleased with the impact those horses have had. Ka Ying Rising winning The Everest gave us all a really big buzz.”

Some horses mean more than others. Vow And Declare won the Melbourne Cup and pretty much saved the farm.

“It was a bit of a fairytale the way it happened,” he said. “It was during that time that I went to New Zealand and paid $110,000 for Miami Bound and she won the Oaks.

“I’d had a nice horse called Lycurgus, who’d won a Galilee Final at Flemington, and he had a half-brother at the sale passed in for $50,000. The owner asked me to train it and it was Vow And Declare.”

One to watch for the Crown Oaks 👀

Mark Zahra kicks off his 2025 #MelbCupCarnival in style aboard GETTA GOOD FEELING.

🎥 @wwos | #DerbyDay pic.twitter.com/Tclrh421O4

— Victoria Racing Club (@FlemingtonVRC) November 1, 2025

Vow And Declare fended off a swarm of internationals to win the 2019 Cup on the Tuesday and Miami Bound won the Oaks on the Thursday. It was a defining week.

“You could not have scripted a Cup week any better given the three years we’d had tied up in court,” O’Brien said.

On Tuesday, O’Brien wore his poker-face of quiet satisfaction as Vow And Declare’s baby half-sister Litzdeel bolted home in the Heritage Cup.

As always, O’Brien was thinking way ahead, to the 2026 Melbourne Cup. Again, this will be a slow and steady journey.

Thursday’s Oaks quest with Getta Good Feeling comes after a slow build-up and a relatively frantic rounding off.

Getta Good Feeling, a $525,000 yearling owned by billionaire Jonathan Munz, stamped herself as a likely Oaks winner with an effortless win in the Wakeful Stakes.

“You’ve got to train according to your personality and I guess I’m not in a rush. I worked for Bart for two years and I learned a lot but I think I was always a bit the same by nature” – Danny O’Brien

This means a five-day turnaround, an unfamiliar short turnaround for O’Brien.

“In any other circumstance you’d call yourself crazy putting a horse on that program but it’s such a tradition and the Wakeful has a very strong record of producing the Oaks winner,” O’Brien said.

Getta Good Feeling has not been scorched into the Oaks. The grounding began 18 months ago, slow and steady. She had one run as a two-year-old, was tipped out and heads into Thursday at the sixth run of her second preparation.

“She’s an absolutely gorgeous filly. She had star quality the moment she came into the stable. We had her in and out a few times as a two-year-old, then gave her a good break, let her find her feet in life, and now we have a preparation that has gone perfectly,” he said.

It was a typical O’Brien scene in the mounting yard last Saturday as Getta Good Feeling bolted clear in the Wakeful. There were gasps and high-fives all around him but for O’Brien, a handshake to a well-wisher and recognition of a job only half done. Same thing on Tuesday with Litzdeel. In the moment, O’Brien was thinking a year ahead.

“The Wakeful is a great race but it’s a preliminary. You’re happy to win but all you can think about is whether you have all bases loaded for the grand final,” he said.