O'Brien threatens US move

Trainer Aidan O'Brien is threatening to leave his Ballydoyle base in Ireland and move to the US if the Irish planning authorities allow an incinerator plant to be built in the village of Rosegreen, next door to his mighty training empire.

The handler, who completed the English-Irish Derby double at the Curragh yesterday with High Chaparral, said: "It is proven that the emissions and dioxins from these incinerators are health hazards, but in every country that they have been built it's only after seven or eight years that you really know the problems they cause.

"Horses take in 40 times more dioxins than human beings, so what is it going to do to them? You wouldn't be able to graze the horses without worrying about contaminating them further, and there is no way anyone can say this wouldn't affect the horses' performance. For human beings, this is a life-and-death matter. The pollution from these incinerators causes birth defects and it increases the risk of throat cancer by 25 per cent.

"I wouldn't consider raising our family within a 40-kilometre radius of such a plant and I wouldn't ask people to work that close to one. Hopefully, everybody will get together and ensure it doesn't happen, but if it does, America would definitely be an option for us. As everybody knows, Coolmore has a big operation there."

Aidan and his wife Anne-Marie have four children under 10 and Mrs O'Brien added: "We wouldn't rear our family here. When you go into the shop to buy your milk and butter how are you going to know where the cows have grazed?"

Also throwing his weight behind the campaign to stop the incinerator being built is Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson who is a part-owner of the brilliant Rock of Gibraltar. And another name from the horseracing world who is against the plans is Lord Lloyd-Webber, owner of the Kiltinan Castle Stud not far from the Coolmore operation.