By Chris McGrath
Call it a Milestone achievement. Any farm, right up to the biggest brands of the Bluegrass, would have been proud to match the three stakes wins in 24 hours recorded by John O'Meara a couple of weekends back. And yet this is a man tending just a dozen mares, with the assistance of a single employee. Some landmark, then, in an odyssey stretching back four decades to when O'Meara first arrived in Lexington and called a farm he'd found in the bus station telephone directory.
“Is anybody Irish working there?” he asked.
Another Irishman was working there soon after, sure enough, but it would still be a long and winding road, either side of the ocean, before O'Meara went to an auction in 2002, bought 165 acres just outside Lexington and “became very friendly with the bank”. He called the farm Milestone, for an influential Irish Draft Horse his father had stood at Toomevara Stud back in Co. Tipperary. But if various experiments since have tended to confirm the odds against an enterprise on this modest scale–despite a few dozen winners as a trainer, and a bold attempt to launch a couple of stallions–then equally that's a measure of the exceptional horsemanship underpinning this remarkable treble.
It started with Big Invasion (Declaration of War), whose first three dams have all grazed Milestone pasture. Sold as a yearling for $72,000 at the 2020 September Sale to Phil Hager's Taproot Bloodstock, he has been hurtling up the sophomore ladder with five consecutive wins for Christopher Clement and Reeves Thoroughbred Racing, clocking 1:00.80 on his graded stakes debut in the GIII Quick Call S. over 5 1/2 furlongs at Saratoga.
The next afternoon another 3-year-old, Roses for Debra (Liam's Map), followed up her maiden success over the same track with a stakes score against fellow Pennsylvania-breds at Presque Isle Downs. She is trained for O'Meara himself by Michelle Brafford, having been found (knocked down to Chris Drakos) for just $25,000 in the same September Sale.
And within the hour the 6-year-old Change of Control (Fed Biz), a Milestone graduate, took her career earnings to $923,725 with her sixth black-type success in another turf sprint, at Colonial Downs. O'Meara understands Change of Control's connections are hoping to get her to the Breeders' Cup, as a graded stakes winner already at Keeneland. But the real excitement concerns Big Invasion, who got a triple-digit Beyer for his Saratoga win.
“With Declaration of War I thought I'd put some stamina into the mare, but as it turned out the speed has just been compounded in her,” O'Meara reflects. “He'd be unbeaten but for getting left in the gate on his debut. I hope he might [stretch out], because the longer you go, the longer you last. But you can't blame them, if there's big money being given away to run against 3-year-olds going short. He's with a top trainer, they take really good care of their horses, so he'll be getting every chance in the world. It's exciting.”
Whatever happens from here, Big Invasion is already a huge tribute to the way his breeder developed a family from third dam Pola (Strawberry Road {Aus}), acquired for $55,000 back in 2000. O'Meara had actually tried to buy her at the Keeneland November Sale the previous year, when culled by breeder Allen Paulson, but had to surrender at $70,000 after Frank Stronach came in for her.
“She had a lot of speed,” he recalls. “You know, :22, :44 type speed. She didn't get away in her first race, won her second, but then pulled a suspensory. I went to the Keeneland November Sale to buy her, sat around thinking there was a good deal coming up, with Strawberry Road such a solid, sound, under-rated stallion. I didn't have the money to get her that day, but then they just put her in foal to Alphabet Soup and put her in their own sale the next year, with a free Golden Missile season.”
O'Meara retained the Alphabet Soup filly that came with the package, who went on to be stakes-placed, and then used the Golden Missile cover to produce a colt he took to the September Sale with a $29,000 reserve. He made $140,000, before pinhooker Mike Miller had an even bigger touch at Gulfstream the following February, selling to Bob and Beverly Lewis for $600,000. As Going Wild, the colt won the Sham S. for D. Wayne Lukas en route to a crack at the GI Kentucky Derby.
Pola's next date was with Out of Place, and the resulting filly was retained as Pola's Place after failing to meet her reserve as a yearling but did not run until four.
“I couldn't sell her so sent her to Florida as a 2-year-old,” O'Meara recalls. “But she pulled a suspensory so I brought her home, gave her time. Dr. Bramlage ultra-sounded her and said give her more time. So I gave her another three months, took her back. And he said, 'Another two months.' And after that he said, 'Okay, you can go on.' So I sent her to Turfway on the poly, thinking it would be easier on her. And she turned out to be very fast. She was in front every [first] call, every race she ever ran in, and won a stakes race for me.”
Retired to the farm, Pola's Place was given a chance with a couple of foal shares to the young Curlin. One resulted in a filly named Curls in Place, who O'Meara was able to buy out as a $25,000 weanling on account of X-ray issues. Once again, O'Meara had to bide his time. She had ability, but wasn't showing it, including under a tag, and it was again only when she was four that she finally put it together to win a couple of races.
Big Invasion is only her third foal, both previous ones having managed a minor stakes placing.
“And she's still only 11,” O'Meara says. “She's not very big, but a beautiful looker. You look at a Ferrari and look at her, you'd think she's the Ferrari. And she's a very nice, kind mare.”
Big Invasion made a good price for Hip 3303, and will now decorate the page of his half-brother by Air Force Blue when he, too, appears deep in the September Sale. (It will also do no harm that this family has been newly decorated by Nest (Curlin), whose dam is out of a half-sister to Pola.)
“He's in the third last day, I think, but that's fine–once it's there [on the pedigree], it never goes away,” O'Meara says. “Big Invasion wasn't very big, but he was well proportioned, well put together, and a very smart horse. And this colt is much the same, moderate-sized but very intelligent, very easy to deal with.”
Though O'Meara will sell when he can, he is always happier to retain a filly. That's what he is doing with the mare's 2-year-old by Empire Maker; she also has a weanling colt by War at Will and is now in foal to Maclean's Music.
Change of Control's dam, America's Blossom (Quiet American), is also still in a position to exploit her success. She has a big, backward sophomore by Midshipman that O'Meara is still developing, and a yearling filly by Karakontie (Jpn) that he has also retained. She's now pregnant to Dialed In.
America's Blossom was found for just $7,000 at the Keeneland January Sale in 2015. “If you don't have a lot of money, you've got to do your homework,” O'Meara says. “Those Quiet American mares are really good, and she was stakes-placed herself, and very tough. She'd had one foal by Pleasantly Perfect and didn't get in foal when they bred her back, so they obviously decided to cut her loose. And January is the kind of sale where you can get a good deal: people don't want to keep them, and with the breeding season so close you can get straight going.”
We have seen how much patience O'Meara required to develop the mares behind Big Invasion, and again he has been no rush with Roses for Debra.
“She's out of a Bernardini mare that had already produced a stakes winner when I bought her,” O'Meara explained. “I sent her to Florida for the 2-year-old sales and she worked in :10 flat [at OBS April] but chipped her knee. So I had to bring her home and operate on her and give her the time. And because she's Pennsylvania-bred I sent her up there to race. On her first start she got taken down, then a couple of weeks later she won by six and now she's won a $100,000 stakes race.”
Like so many Irishmen working with young horses in the United States, O'Meara was actually raised in a National Hunt and sport horse environment. (Fitting, as such, that he should have bred Blackfoot Mystery (Out of Place), the re-trained Thoroughbred whose eventing career took him to the Rio Olympics in 2016 under Boyd Martin.) Besides Milestone, Prefairy was another resonant name at Toomevara–in both spheres–but O'Meara was only 12 when losing his father in 1969 and instead became one of many young compatriots forever indebted to Michael Osborne's mentorship at the Irish National Stud.
O'Meara then cut his teeth on farms in Australia and New Zealand before that first sampling of the Bluegrass.
“I went home in 1981 and was going to change the world,” he says wryly. “But interest rates were 22% and I couldn't get going. So went back to Mr. Osborne and he set me up with a visa and a job at Spendthrift.”
A stint at Gainesway followed, and he then spent four years working for Carl Nafzger before eventually venturing out on his own, initially renting land and boarding mares before committing to the Milestone gamble.
“My first aim was to train horses,” he says. “If you know what you're doing, you'll know where you are with a horse within a couple of months. Whereas breeding is always like a five-year plan. But while I trained a couple of nice ones, usually someone will come along to buy them and they're on their way.
“I had a couple of stallions for a time, as well. Mancini was a three-parts brother to Unbridled's Song, who was standing for $300,000. I didn't think he could lose.”
But he found a way, evidently? O'Meara responds with a laugh.
“That's a tough game,” he says. “Spendthrift had 47 stallions when I went there. A lot of them didn't make it, but they obviously had Raise A Native, Seattle Slew, J.O. Tobin, Exclusive Native, Lord Avie, Affirmed. They had 200 boarding mares and 200 mares of their own. It was a huge machine: they got the stallions because they had the mares, and the mares because they had the stallions. Mancini got a lot of sound horses but not a lot of support. I supported him as best as I could, but nearly went broke doing it.”
Holding your nerve is both harder, and even more essential, for those who can't play the numbers game. But O'Meara understands how the axiom “more haste, less speed” might have been devised specifically for Thoroughbreds–one legacy, perhaps, of an upbringing among those big, raw horses back in Ireland.
“The thing I couldn't handle about National Hunt horses is that you don't break them until they're three,” he says. “But by then they're so big they want to kill you!”
As it is, O'Meara divides his time between pre-training in the mornings–partly because he still loves the training side, and partly to keep costs under control–and then managing the mares and foals. There are five yearlings to sell this year, leaving another five whose commercial imperfections shouldn't stop them being trained. But the same approach governs both types of prep, whether for the sales or the racetrack.
“Just don't rush them,” O'Meara says. “It's hard to turn out a horse that's fit. But if you don't wait, they'll make you wait. So you just try to breed them to sound horses, take care of them growing up, and then it's just lots of long, slow work.”
And if it's unusual for the dividends to be quite so vividly compressed, O'Meara's recent streak of success will be warmly appreciated by many peers who also persevere in old school tenets of perspiration and patience. Because if you can't afford to travel the wide, smooth highway along the valley floor, every now and then sheer tenacity over the steep, crumbling mountain track will take you to the same destination.
“It's been a great experience the whole way,” O'Meara says, uncomplainingly. “And when this kind of thing happens it's fun to be able to get up in the morning and look at a horse like Curls in Place. Somebody up there seems to be looking down on me, at the moment anyway. Long may it last!”
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