LEXINGTON is now well and truly home to Toomevara-born John O’Meara. “I lived here longer than I lived there!” remarked the owner of Milestone Farm, located next door to Fasig-Tipton, North America’s oldest auction house and a stone’s throw from Kentucky Horse Park.

The 165-acre farm’s name is a reverential nod to his father Jim, who stood the thoroughbred pair of Prefairy and Pinzari, alongside the Irish Draught icon Milestone, in Toomevara.

“I called the farm Milestone in recognition of my father and what he had done,” John had explained four years ago when we met after the Rolex Kentucky three-day-event, competed at and attended by Aidan Keogh, William Micklem and Paddy Hughes.

That proved to be a proverbial on-the-hoof interview, accompanying O’Meara and his broodmare, Oxford Joy to Darley Stud’s American base at Jonabell Farm, where she was covered by the Kentucky Derby winner, Animal Kingdom.

The plush waiting room was a world away from the railway sleeper bench in Philip Heenan’s yard and that morning, John had recounted tales of his visits there, including how one Corkman found himself unceremoniously demoted to the end of the queue for Clover Hill after casually kicking away one of Heenan’s prize terriers.

“I’d go along with Matthew, I remember it was a little hairy getting in there!” he said, recalling the narrow boreen that led uphill to another animal kingdom in Ringroe. Matthew and he are part of the O’Meara family of eight and after their father passed away, the young brothers took over running Toomevara Stud.

Coincidentally, Prefairy is the damsire of High Dolly, William Micklem’s prolific broodmare that produced the full-brothers, Mandiba (on the US home team at the 2010 World Equestrian Games hosted at Kentucky Horse Park), and High Kingdom, third with Zara Tindall at that 2017 Rolex Kentucky.

“Never a prophet in your own land’ seemingly applied to Prefairy, another sourced by the legendary Dick Jennings. “Growing up, I remember Prefairy about the farm. A tall, light-bodied liver chesnut that got about 30 mares a year,” described John.

From that small book of mares, Prefairy produced the home-bred Astbury, Cool Affair, Troubled Times and the Thyestes Chase winner Monanore, bred by neighbour John Meagher.

His half-bred offspring included Graham Fletcher’s good horse Cool Customer, Foxhunter final winner Hold Hard and David Broome’s Fairly Cool while the Dublin reserve champion Fairy Fox, bred by Crossogue Equestrian Centre’s Tony Molloy, was sold to Libya.

John O'Meara and Maureen Gallatin at Milestone Farm \ Susan Finnerty

Tully

The late Jack Powell, acclaimed as Europe’s longest-serving vet after 75 years work, was another mine of information about the Precipitation son, Prefairy. He had gleefully recalled a Horse & Hound sales report where the correspondent pithily remarked that he hoped Prefairy was not earmarked to be “a country stallion in Ireland.” “If only every country stallion was a Prefairy,” Jack observed in his 2010 feature in The Irish Field.

Powell, often with a Jack Russell terrier riding shotgun in his latest Volkswagen, was their local vet. “You needed to be ready when Jack got there, he’d do what needed to be done and get gone!”

It was Jack’s brother Jim, of Shanbally House Stud, who steered John towards the Irish National Stud management course in Tully. “I wasn’t sure if it was going to be horses, I just wanted to do anything but school, even though my mother [Sheila] would say ‘Education is no load,’” said John, who attended the Christian Brothers school in Nenagh and Rockwell.

“I left Rockwell after Fourth Year. My first job was with Ericsson, who were going to put in a new telephone exchange in Nenagh. They were hiring a lot of lads so I went to work for them. My first paycheque was £14 a week so I didn’t last too long there! I went to work for Nenagh Creamery and my first paycheque there was £90.

“The next winter I did an ANCO course in welding in Shannon because Kellogs were going to build a big factory down in Cork and they needed welders. So I did that for six months and then went back to the creamery again.”

He continued to divide his year, working at the creamery in summertime and “helping Matthew for the winter; milking, playing round with the horses and hunting,” until, “Lo and behold, I got a call from Michael Osborne to be up here next Monday.”

The National Stud course ran from February to July. “You rotated through different yards, a different one every week and you’d spend one week on nights foaling mares, That year I was there, Michael had rented a yard – Clonunion - in Adare. He sent a couple of stallions down there and we had to rotate there too.

“At the time, we made £25 a week - more than Ericssons and less than the creamery!

“He was a great character, very friendly,” said John about his mentor and people person, Michael Osborne. “He’d always come to the yard every day and ask you how you were, had you enough bedclothes, enough to eat. He really cared about people and he made you feel that he cared about you.

“I was the one who asked questions. I could bring up experiences from home, my dad had passed away by that time so we did things and I didn’t know why we did them. We’d have lectures four, five nights a week and Michael would usually give them and I’d be asking questions all the time.

“Osborne said one day, ‘Look boys, you know at the end of the course you’ve got to find somewhere to go. You’re either going to go home or find jobs.’

“I was sitting beside Bill Smart, an Australian chap on the course who I became friends with and he said ‘Here, call this guy.’ And I called Milluna Stud in Adelaide and they said ‘Yeah, we’ll give you a job, just show up here.’ And I said ‘Okay, I’ll be there on a certain date’ and I showed up and we went to work. I spent six months working the breeding season at that place and then I went to Lindsay Park, which was the biggest studfarm in South Australia at the time and spent the next six months there.”

The John O'Meara-bred Change of Control (Fed Biz) wins the Giants Causeway at Keeneland last month

Phonebooks

That was in 1979, ahead of Google, mobile phones and social media networking. After his 12-month visa expired, John had a stroke of luck at finding his next job.

“I only had a one-year visa so I had to go. I hopped on a horse plane and went to New Zealand, picked up the phonebook in the airport, called the farms and the first farm I called, I said who I was, what I had done and could I have a job? And he said, ‘If you show up here as soon as you can, you have a job!’

“When you’re 22 years old, you don’t give a hoot!” he said about landing in a new country without a job. “They know if you come through the Irish National Stud, you know what you’re doing.

“I liked Australia better but New Zealand was a nice change. Of course it rained a lot there so it was a lot greener than Australia. I spent six months on a farm there and then returned to Australia for three months, just touring around.

“Then I went back to New Zealand, picked up my stuff, hopped on a horse plane and came to America. I got off the plane in LA, got on a Greyhound bus to St Louis where I had cousins, they came to pick me up and I spent a week there.”

Then it was back on board another Greyhound and another Golden Pages search when he reached Lexington. “I went through the phonebook in the bus station and I called Murty Farm and said, ‘Is there anybody Irish working there?’ And there were some people there, who’d been on the course the year after I did it and they said, ‘We know him!’ So they came to the bus station to pick me up and I spent some time there, just going round different farms.”

After winging it around the world, “I was happy enough to go home. At that point, I wanted to buy a farm and get going in Ireland.”

Taking the plunge

High interest rates, typically 22%, blocked that plan. So in 1982, it was back to Kentucky where Michael Osborne had arranged a job for him at Spendthrift Farm. John stayed there for a year, followed by six months at Gainesway Farm and five years with Carl Nafzger, the trainer of Kentucky Derby winners Street Sense and Unbridled.

Eventually, he took the plunge, bought his own farm in 2002 and even stood a couple of stallions. “I stumbled into it hoping to break even. The first stallion I stood Mancini, he worked out quite well, the next one was no good!”

No airbrushed recollection there.

“I’ve been doing it now for 20-odd years on my own but I’m doing alright, I bred a stakes winner in Keeneland and another stakes-placed horse in Keeneland. You [breeder] get 10% in Kentucky and if the mare foals in Indiana, the Indiana breeding programme pays 20% to the breeder and 10% to the stallion.

“That’s why I stood Mancini and E Z’s Gentleman in Indiana for the money but they didn’t get too many mares,” he said candidly, adding that, in his opinion, one in 20 stallions go on to be truly successful sires.

Airbnb

Which does he prefer, breeding or training thoroughbreds? “Well, the racing is much more exciting and you can figure out if you know what you’re doing in six to eight months.

“Whereas it takes five, six years in the breeding business to get going; to prove the mares you picked out, the stallions you chose, how you took care of them - that all takes that much longer in the breeding business.”

The Milestone Farm broodmare headcount stands at 15. Would he like more or less broodmares? “Less! It’s too much work anymore and it’s hard to get help. I foaled 16 mares this year and it seemed to drag on forever. My best mare, [America’s Blossom], the one who produced the stakes winner at Keeneland recently, she just foaled three nights ago but I’ve been watching her for three weeks.

“I have one guy helping me on the farm and basically, at this time of year, we’re flat to the board just trying to keep the grass mowed. It’s a lot easier when the numbers are down. Try and up the quality and keep the numbers down. The only time I use all the stalls on the farm is when we have freezing rain in the fall and spring and horses can’t get warm, so you put them in.”

Apart from 75 horse stalls, there are five houses on the farm. “Two of which are Airbnb’s now and we’re soon to make a third into an Airbnb. My girlfriend Debbie Fritz takes care of that and does a great job, she takes time to talk to the guests and we get good feedback. So that’s doing well.”

Situated in Bourbon County, the farm’s proximity to the Kentucky Horse Park is a major selling point. “Most of the guests are staying for events at the Horse Park. Once the weather cleared up and Covid restrictions lift, it gets busy again. It’s all about trying to generate cash on the farm.”

State Governor Andy Beshear recently announced that Kentucky will return to near-normality on June 11th, thereby ending more than 12 months of restrictions in the Bluegrass state. Some applied within the bloodstock industry.

“Normally you take the mare off the trailer when you get to the stud, you hand her over to someone who takes her into the breeding shed and you’re allowed watch. The last two years you couldn’t even go into the breeding shed. You couldn’t hand over the paperwork, you had to email or text the details before you got there, so they wouldn’t have to handle the paperwork.

“You could call an order in to a restaurant and get carryout [takeaway] so at least you could get food but that’s all starting to relax and everything is back to normal now.”

Rio

Five years ago, O’Meara became one of the elite handful of Olympic horse breeders when Blackfoot Mystery (Out Of Place – True Mystery, by Proud Truth) and Boyd Martin were selected on the US eventing team for Rio de Janeiro.

‘Red’, in a similar circuitous route as his globetrotting breeder, bounced around America, from Kentucky through Idaho to California – where the 17hh giant finished last twice out of his three starts – and eventually to Martin in Pennsylvania.

The story of the Off The Track Thoroughbred (OTTB) caught the public and mainstream media’s attention in the Games lead-up. Picking up the Wall Street Journal on the Philadelphia stopover to Rio, I read an article about the syndicate formed to buy Blackfoot Mystery and the financial side to event horse ownership.

O’Meara and some of the staff at Claiborne Farm, where Out Of Place stood, downed tools to watch Blackfoot Mystery where after one of the best cross-country performances, he rocketed up the leaderboard to sixth place and within medal range. Unfortunately, there was no fairytale ending with two fences down in the show jumping phase to see the pair still finish with a creditable 16th place result.

Rio’s high attrition rate for event horses was referred to in Boyd Martin’s announcement last December that ‘Red’ had been sold to Texan rider Amber Clark to compete at lower level.

“In 2016 Red gave everything he had to jump clean around a brutal cross-country course in Rio.

“I’ve never had a horse give so much heart around such a course, and I’ll always be in awe of how exhausted and empty Red was toward the end of the course, but he kept on digging deep and pushing himself to the finish line. In hindsight, I think Red left a part of himself in Brazil.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am that his career has got a new life with a new rider from Dallas, Texas. To me, this is the perfect transition for Big Red: He’s still sound and happy and keen to go to work,” Martin wrote on his Windurra Farm blog.

Stakes winner

Is breeding an Olympic horse a matter of pride, if not quite financially rewarding? “Oh, for sure, but that was a secondary field. I bred him as a racehorse and he just didn’t pan out.”

Did it open up any doors for other customers? “No but that’s not the business I’m in, so I wouldn’t have encouraged it too much! I’m trying to breed racehorses.”

That same Olympic year, John sold a filly foal, later named Change Of Control (Fed Biz - America’s Blossom, by Quiet American) at the Keeneland November breeding stock sale for $37,000. Five years later, her racetrack earnings total $442,439.

Now owned by Horseshoe Racing LLC, the lion’s share of that prizemoney came via her win last month in the $100,000 Giants Causeway Stakes at Keeneland, which also gave trainer Michelle Lovelle her 500th winner. It was a fitting win for the Giants Causeway granddaughter who quickly followed up with second place in $150,000 Unbridled Sidney Stakes at Churchill Downs.

“When it goes well, it goes well but when it goes bad it really goes bad so my game here is not holding on to them that long. They need to move along and let somebody else spend the money on them!”

His last visit home was in 2019 before the pandemic. However, just as ‘Red’ left a part of him in Rio, there’s still a part of Toomevara in the Bluegrass State.

Next week: Matthew and Milestone