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Former Northern Area point-to-point champion Tom Hamilton flies to Australia on Monday as a new chapter opens on his career in racing.
Hamilton, 28 (pictured above), who grew up near the Scottish Borders town of Hawick, is taking on the role of assistant to Sydney trainer Matthew Smith, having spent the past six seasons in Ireland with Joseph O’Brien. During that time he rode regularly in bumpers and Irish point-to-points while also making visits home to Britain.
His final ride in Ireland was a winner courtesy of the O’Brien-trained filly Shoda who on Wednesday won a Flat race restricted to amateur riders at the Galway Festival. In April he rode in a hunters’ chase at Kelso, while the previous month he partnered Samcro in the St James’s Place Festival Hunters’ Chase at Cheltenham, although the combination pulled up before the second-last. He was Britain’s Northern champion in 2013/14 and 2017/18.
Hamilton, who is heading to Australia with girlfriend Megan O’Leary, said: “Joseph’s horses are running well, but it’s become tricky to get rides because he has fewer jumpers and bumper runners and more Flat horses.
“I was very lucky to ride the filly [at Galway]. Joseph identified it as a race that would suit her and I was very happy to get the ride.”
Of the move to Australia he said: “I’ve been to Melbourne twice with Joseph’s Melbourne Cup runners and loved the racing and way of life down there. Megan did the Godolphin Flying Start course and through that has landed a job as assistant trainer at the Sydney yard run by [British expatriate] Annabel Neasham. When Matthew Smith heard I was interested in a position he rang and offered me a job as assistant. We fly down there on Monday.”
Both Hamilton and O’Leary come from racing families. His parents Michael and Wendy train point-to-pointers and his brother Jamie is a Jump jockey who, when still an amateur, won Aintree’s Foxhunters’ Chase on Tartan Snow, while O’Leary’s father Eddie runs Lynn Lodge Stud and manages the Gigginstown House Stud horses owned by his brother Michael, who is the head of Ryanair.
Hamilton is not the first leading British point-to-point rider to try their hand on the opposite side of the globe. Rachel King, who rode her first winner at Tweseldown in 2007, has gone on to become a top-ranking Flat jockey with a number of Grade One wins in the Southern Hemisphere. She recently returned home to get married and the following week finished second on a John and Thady Gosden runner at Royal Ascot.
