IT’S an early start on Monday morning, the day after Michael Jung’s historic ‘Triple Crown’ victory in the Rolex Kentucky Horse Trials, as there’s an addition to Milestone Farm owner John O’Meara’s schedule.

Monday’s first stop now turns out to be a visit to the Darley empire’s Lexington base to drop off one of his 17 resident broodmares, Oxford Joy, to be covered by the Kentucky Derby winner Animal Kingdom.

The waiting room area is a world away from the famous railway sleeper bench in Philip Heenan’s yard, but O’Meara recounts anecdotes of that era and how one Corkman went to the end of the queue for Clover Hill after casually kicking away one of the Heenan terriers.

Then the conversation turns to Prefairy, the damsire of High Kingdom, Zara Tindall’s third-placed horse the previous day. Possibly one of the most under-utilised stallions in Irish sport horse breeding - his sire Precipitation produced Furioso, one of continental breeding’s foundation stallions - John recalls Prefairy as a ‘tall, light-bodied liver chesnut. He probably covered just 30 mares a year.”

NATIONAL STUD

Prefairy, Pinzari, (by the 1953 Epsom Derby winner Pinza) and the Irish Draught stallion Milestone, all stood with the O’Meara family in Toomevara. John opted to do the world-famous management course at the Irish National Stud.

“Then I went to Australia first in 1979 and worked in some of the biggest farms there.” He made a circuitous route home to Tipperary, first accompanying a load of thoroughbreds to Los Angeles and then crossing America by Greyhound bus for his first Kentucky experience.

“Money was too expensive, it was 22% back then and so I couldn’t get started at home. I went back to Michael Osborne and asked him to get me a job, so he sent me to Spendthrift. I worked at Spendthrift, which at the time was the biggest commercial breeding farm with 48 stallions, for a year, Gainesway for six months, then I went to work for a trainer because I wanted to learn how to train horses,” O’Meara said.

“I spent five years working for Carl Nafzger, who won two Kentucky Derbys, with Street Sense and Unbridled, then I went to work as a private trainer and got a couple of broodmares of my own, so I accidentally got into the breeding business here.”

PLUNGE

He took the plunge in 2002 by buying his own breeding and boarding farm, which stands adjacent to the Fasig-Tipton premises, the oldest auction house in North America. There was only one name for the new investment. “I called it Milestone in recognition of my father and what he had done. It’s 165 acres, 75 stalls, five houses and two miles of internal black-topped roads,” he says on the drive there from the Darley base.

One of those houses is rented by freelance writer and Horses On A Mission website founder Maureen Gallatin, who has closely followed Blackfoot Mystery’s career. She is in the process of moving back to Tryon where the 2018 World Equestrian Games will be hosted. “Tryon is looking beautiful, they’re on schedule with hotels, course, parking etc,” she reports.

Amongst the broodmares grazing in the paddock beside Maureen’s house is Pola’s Place, by the same sire as Blackfoot Mystery - Out Of Place. She’s also a half-sister to Going Wild, the 2005 Kentucky Derby hopeful, co-bred by John.

And while undoubtedly the Tipperary man hopes to breed another Kentucky Derby contender, the remarkable story of Blackfoot Mystery is another milestone in a career that has spanned three continents in the bloodstock world.