Owner of the Day - Ian Hamilton and Tommy's Oscar

As the voice of Owners, the ROA are consistently promoting the impact and benefits of ownership whilst working to make ownership more rewarding.

We are proud sponsors of the Cheltenham Festival Leading Owner Award as well as the daily ROA Owner of the Day award, both of which will be championing Owners’ successes and their contributions to the sport.

Today’s (Tuesday 15 March) ROA Owner of the Day is Ian Hamilton of Claywalls Farm, Capheaton in Northumberland. He is the owner of Tommy’s Oscar, who goes in search of a famous victory at The Festival in the Unibet Champion Hurdle (3.30pm).

Ian was an understandable mix of emotions as he spoke to the ROA just half an hour before setting off with trainer wife Ann and Champion Hurdle challenger Tommy’s Oscar, bound for Cheltenham from their Northumberland farm on what could just be the trip of their lifetimes.

Defending champion Honeysuckle will be nigh on the toughest nut to crack at the Festival this week, and while the mount of Rachael Blackmore would be the most popular winner of the race, it’s very arguable that the next most popular would be seven-year-old Tommy’s Oscar.

The Hamiltons’ farm has 1,000 sheep, 300 cattle and stretches across 500 acres. Their racing empire is rather smaller with just the six runners, all owned by Ian, so far in 2021-22. 

However, as owner and trainer, the Hamiltons have been enjoying the best season of their careers, with a dozen victories on the board already and Tommy’s Oscar having won his last four starts, notably the Grade 2 Champion Hurdle Trial at Haydock in January.

Asked if he was excited about Tuesday’s big race, Ian said on Monday morning: “Yes and no. We’re excited but also apprehensive. It’s a big thing for hill farmers from Northumberland to have a runner in the Champion Hurdle, though we are trying to treat it as just another race.”

The journey of five to six hours to Cheltenham was not being undertaken the day before through choice, rather necessity, with the couple unwilling to risk leaving it until raceday to go, with the vagaries of travel on their mind.

It will be a first for Tommy’s Oscar, as he hasn’t previously stayed overnight at a track before a race, so let’s hope board and lodgings are to his satisfaction.

There was also another reason why Ian and Ann needed to be on hand at Cheltenham early on Tuesday, as Ian said: “We’ve both been asked to go on The Opening Show by ITV Racing. We are just going to try to enjoy it all.”

Nowhere has the interest been keener than locally, with Ian continuing: “There are local people going to Cheltenham who have never been racing in their lives before, they’re going to cheer on Tommy’s. A lot of people have backed him at 50-1.”

What price Tommy's Oscar goes off remains to be seen, but you can imagine each-way punters being interested in a tough, in-form hurdler who has no more question marks against him than any other Champion Hurdle challenger bar Honeysuckle. If anything, fewer than most.

Coming from the renown point-to-point academy of Colin Bowe’s is a head start for any horse, and the Hamiltons have had three off the County Wexford man, led by Tommy’s Oscar.

“The former trainer Howard Johnson is a pal of mine and put us in touch with Colin about this horse, and it’s been a successful link,” says Ian.

The link that resulted in the Loughrea point-to-point winner being sold privately to the Hamiltons in autumn 2020 has now led to the biggest National Hunt stage of them all.

It’s one the couple have graced only once before in a professional capacity, in 2014, when Runswick Royal contested the County Hurdle but was pulled up before the last.

They do not, then, have anything remotely resembling a Festival routine. Asked if they had formulated a plan as to how to spend the big day, Ian said: “Our plan is the bar! No, we’d best keep a clear head, but we do have two lots of friends who will have a bar going in the car parks so we’ll see how it goes.”

Just one more victory this campaign would ensure a career-high tally of winners for a training operation that started in the 1980s, and the Hamiltons are already thinking beyond Cheltenham for stable stars Tommy’s Oscar and Nuts Well, who this month won the Listed Premier Chase at Kelso and is now on a rating of 157 as a result, 1lb higher than Tommy’s Oscar.

“Nuts Well has been put up and we’re probably looking at Aintree for him, and it’s the same with Tommy’s Oscar - he would stay two and a half miles on a flat track and decent ground,” said Ian. “When you get to these sorts of marks, handicaps are just about out.”

The Hamiltons have enjoyed big-race success at Aintree before, winning the 2003 Fox Hunters’ with Divet Hill, who they also bred and who was named after a hill behind their farm.

While Tommy’s Oscar is excelling over hurdles - he has never run over fences under rules despite running in eight point-to-points - you get the impression that the Hamiltons primarily source their horses with a chasing career in mind, and asked which other horse running at the Festival this week he’d love to own, Ian doesn’t need to think twice about his answer.

“Bravemansgame,” he says. “We ran Pay The Piper against him at Haydock in November, and he was beaten onty seven or so lengths actually in third, but what a lovely horse Paul Nicholls has got there. 

“He’s beautiful, a great jumper, and he’s the one I’d want to own. I’ll bid for him!”

Ian is no doubt an expert at cattle and sheep auctions and trades, but whether Bryan Drew and John Dance would allow themselves to be sweet-talked out of Bravesmansgame has got to be a longshot.

In any case, he’s not running until Wednesday. More immediately, the Hamiltons, jockey Danny McMenamin and Tommy’s Oscar - hopefully after a good night’s sleep - have other business to attend to. They, and he, might just be a story to roll around the hills of Northumberland for years to come.