Nowadays based at Willow Farm in Upper Hemsley, near York, North Yorkshire, David O’Meara was formerly a successful National Hunt jockey, notably winning the Fox Hunters’ Chase, over the Grand National fences at Aintree, on Bells Life, trained by Philip Hobbs, in 2000. He quit the saddle in 2008, initially to set up a livery yard at Great Habton, near Malton, North Yorkshire, alongside former weighing-room colleague Anthony Ross.
Less than rwo years later, though, O’Meara took over the training licence at Arthington Barn Stables in Nawton, North Yorkshire and saddled his first winner, Simple Jim, ridden by Silvestre De Sousa, in a handicap at Redcar on June 19, 2010. Fast forward less than a decade and O’Meara reached the landmark of 1,000 career winners, under both codes, courtesy of Betsy Trotter, ridden by Harrison Shaw, in a fillies’ handicap at Wolverhampton on October 5, 2019. The following sunmer, he reached the same landmark on the Flat, alone, when Sudona, ridden by Daniel Tudhope, justified favouritism in a handicap at Pontefract on July 7, 2020.
O’Meara saddled 100 winners in a season for the first time in 2013 and went on to repeat that feat for the next 11 seasons running. Indeed, on the last occasion he did so, in 2024, he enjoyed his most successful season so far, financially, amassing over £2.3 million in prize money. At the time of writing, he has saddled seven Group 1 winners at home and abroad, the first of which was G Force, ridden by Daniel Tudhope, in the Sprint Cup at Haydock in 2014 and the last Estrange, also ridden by Tudhope, in the Pretty Polly Stakes at the Curragh in 2026. A lightly-raced five-year-old mare, Estrange has, so far, won six of her nine starts for O’Meara and amassed just shy of £700,000 in prise money.
