Born on September 13, 1961, Tim Easterby is the son of the late Miles Henry “Peter” Easterby, who won the National Hunt Trainers’ Championship three seasons running between 1978/79 and 1980/81 and famously trained the dual Champion Hurdle winners Sea Pigeon and Night Nurse. He took over the family training operation at Habton Grange in Great Habton, near Malton, North Yorkshire in 1996.
A highly-respected dual-purpose trainer, like his father, Easterby has established his own admirable record of success under both codes. On the Flat, he enjoyed his most successful season so far, numerically and financially, in 2021, when he saddled 133 winners and amassed just shy of £2 million in prize money. The seasonal highlight was the victory of Winter Power, ridden by Silvestre De Sousa, in the Group 1 Nunthorpe Stakes at York.
Under National Hunt Rules, his most successful season, numerically, came in his first full season as a licence holder, 1996/97, when he saddled 32 winners from 153 runners, at a healthy 21% strike rate and, financially, in 2000/01, when he collected over £300,000 in prize money. In the latter season, the prolific Barton, who had already won the Grade 1 Royal & SunAlliance Novices’ Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival in 1999, won both the Grade 2 Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle and the Grade 1 Aintree Hurdle.
Back on the Flat, at the time of writing, Easterby has a total of 34 Pattern victories to his name, including Group 1 wins for the aforementioned Winter Power and, more recently, Art Power, ridden by David Allan, in the British Champions Sprint Stakes at Ascot in 2023. Following his retirement, at the age of nine, in 2026, Easterby said of Art Power, “His British Champions Sprint win was a real highlight. He remarkably ran in that race six times and there were times when he was slightly unlucky not to have won a Group 1 before then.”
