0

I found the following example sentence in Oxford Dictionary:

O'Brien conditioned winners of 13 European Derbies during his career

In the sense that the word "condition" is a transitive and it means:

(to) make (a person or animal) fit and healthy.

But then "O' Brien made winners of 13 European Derbies fit and healthy" sounds really strange to me in a sense that "winners" refer to some people who has won some European Derby. However, searching for the meaning of "winner", it could means a animal, in this case may be a horse if O'Brien means Aidan O'Brien.

Is my guess above correct?

Improve this question
7
  • 2
    It probably refers to horses; a derby is a horse race, as the dictionary will tell you (and most Britons or Americans would know). It might refer to Aidan O'Brien or another trainer such as Vincent O'Brien, but you'll have to count the winners and work it out. This seems to be more a question about sporting knowledge than language.
    – Stuart F
    Commented Jul 23 at 15:45
  • Named after The Derby, a famous British horse race which was itself named after an 18th century Earl of Derby - though 'European Derbies' seems to refer to football matches, according to Google.
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Jul 23 at 15:56
  • It's strange that the title asks about the word "winner," when the unusual usage here is "condition." The "winner" of a race is simply the person, horse, frog, toy car that… wins the race. That much is straightforward. This seems like perhaps a specialized usage of "condition" to mean "train," and I haven't run across an example exactly like this before, but I don't know a lot about horse racing.
    – Andy Bonner
    Commented Jul 23 at 16:14
  • I'm not sure we can get very far if we don't even know which person "O'Brien" is. Can you tell more about the source where you found this?
    – Andy Bonner
    Commented Jul 23 at 16:16
  • 2
    @AndyBonner - It's one of the 'Oxford Languages' definitions found by googling 'condition definition'.
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Jul 23 at 17:27

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

Whether it was animals or people, it means individuals who would go on to win the 13 European Derbies, after he had trained them.

After they had won, you could say "Who trained them?"
Well, it was O'Brien.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .