100 Racing Greats: The final verdict: Vincent O'Brien: O`Brien towers over a cast of giants; After 24 days and thousands of votes, Post readers have chosen their number one - the man who bestrode the sport for four decades as not only the greatest-ever Flat trainer, but the greatest-ever jumps trainer too.

IT WAS a long, hard battle, but in the end there can be no argument about the result - Michael Vincent O'Brien is the greatest figure in the history of horseracing in Britain and Ireland.

The training legend scooped 28 per cent of the total vote to emerge the overwhelming winner at the end of the Post's five-week series 100 Racing Greats.

Readers had been asked to choose between the 12 people rated the highest by our specialist panel. They were given two weeks to vote, by telephone, email or on the Racing Post website.

Voting was brisk from the start. There were surges of support for Tony McCoy and, later, Sheikh Mohammed, but the bookies who formed a market on the event got it right when they priced it up as a two-horse race - between O'Brien and Lester Piggott.

In fact Piggott, many of whose greatest days in the saddle were in partnership with the Ballydoyle maestro, held a slight lead at the end of week one. But O'Brien's support gained momentum over the middle weekend and by the end of the fortnight, Lester had lost touch.

There can be no complaints about the winner. Just as the BBC's 100 Great Britons series, which gave us the idea for this racing equivalent, eventually produced a victor of distinction (Sir Winston Churchill), so the Racing Post exercise has given us a champion with impeccable credentials.

Indeed, the choice of O'Brien will surely win nods of approval from every group within the sport.

At the end of 1999, racing's leading historians John Randall and Tony Morris drew up the definitive list of the greatest Flat trainers of the 20th century. Top was Vincent O'Brien.

They did the same exercise for jump racing. And he was top of that, too.

Just glance at the factfiles on the following pages and you will begin to get the picture. Look at the stunning catalogue of success over jumps in the 1940s and '50s. Martin Pipe and Michael Dickinson rolled into one, and then some. And then think about this: he was even better on the Flat.

As Tony O'Hehir said when he put the case for O'Brien in the Post on Saturday, February 1: "By the mid-1950s he had already plundered enough high-profile races, at home and in Britain, to be guaranteed a prominent part in racing history. But the O'Brien legend was only in its infancy."

One of the most common complaints levelled at the 100 Racing Greats - "a tawdry exercise that does little credit to the paper", according to one correspondent - is the "last five minutes" argument.

You know the one: how can you take polls like this seriously when so many people in the list are so recent?

Well, Vincent O'Brien blows that particular moan out of the water.

His training career began 60 years ago, and nobody before or since has achieved as much over such a wide landscape of racing competition.

It may be true that the make-up of our all-time list has tended to favour the more recent high achievers, although it can certainly be argued that the growth of the sport in terms of competition, professionalism and accessibility has made modern accomplishments all the more worthy.

Surely it was a greater achievement to train six Derby winners in the second half of the 20th century than in the second half of the 19th!

But consider this: of the 100 names in our list, only 45 of them are still alive - clearly testimony to the fact that our panel made more than just lip-service to the evidence of the history books.

Other stats about the list you might find interesting:

lIt contained 77 Britons, 17 Irish, three Americans and three others (Sheikh Mohammed, Aga Khan III and Scobie Breasley);

lIt contained five women;

lIt contained four members of the British royal family;

lThe second-highest Irish-based great was Vincent O'Brien's successor at Ballydoyle, Aidan O'Brien, in 13th.

Should we conduct a similar vote in a few years' time, it is entirely possible that the biggest obstacle to our new champion repeating his success could be Aidan himself.

CAPTION(S):

Grand master: Vincent O'Brien, pictured at the peak of his powers in the early 1970s