Scottish trainer gets to meet his idol

Trenton, NJ — It is often said that people should never meet their childhood heroes, as they may run the risk of being disappointed.

Hugh O’Neil IV, who has recently come over from Scotland with dreams of becoming a harness racing driver, found that warning could not be further from the truth.

Growing up in the small seaside town of Ayr, young Hugh idolized John Campbell. In a 2015 interview O’Neil said the two U.S. drivers he admired most were Campbell and Tim Tetrick.

“I just liked the way they raced,” he said. “They’re never too hard on a horse. And it’s just how well they’ve done in the sport.”

O’Neil came to the United States last November, and the 28-year-old was soon rubbing elbows with his idol at the Dan Patch Awards dinner.

“I got to meet John Campbell there,” he said.

It was actually the second time the two met, but this time it meant a little more.

And it wasn’t a letdown.

“It was unbelievable,” O’Neil said. “He’s been my hero since I was 11 or 12. I wasn’t disappointed, it couldn’t have been better. I met him once when I was maybe 5. I had a picture of me and him at Mohawk. It was a long time ago. I was showing him the picture and he was laughing.”

The meeting was certainly a tale of two drivers. One a legendary Hall of Famer looking back on a fulfilling career, the other a young guy just looking to garner his first drives in the U.S.

And although O’Neil has never met Tetrick, he is a past winner of the Tetrick-sponsored Drive of the Year Award presented by the British Harness Racing Club. When it was suggested that his initial meeting with Tetrick may be if they lined up against each other on the track, O’Neil laughed and said, “Yeah, that would be nice.”

So far, Hugh has driven five qualifiers and had one first, a second, and three thirds. His victory came three weeks ago on a horse named Lone Wolf American at Spring Garden Ranch. Although just a qualifier, it was a thrill for O’Neil.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “I loved it.”

Fittingly, the horse is trained by Dan Altmeyer, who with daughter Heather Wilder and son-in-law Mike Wilder took O’Neil under their wings in Florida this winter. Since his arrival, O’Neil has helped prepare a group of 2- and 3-year-olds for the coming season. They will head for Pennsylvania with their horses this month and stable at The Meadows, where O’Neil hopes to get a driving career underway.

It is something he has dreamed of since, well, since as long as he had the ability to dream. Hugh is a third-generation horseman. His grandfather, Hugh Jr., opened an agricultural supply business and also dabbled in buying and selling horses. Ayr is home to the Ayr Racecourse, which deals strictly in Thoroughbreds.

“It’s like a mile from my house,” O’Neil said. “They had one race with Standardbreds, but never had it back.”

As luck would have it, Hugh Jr. was given a Standardbred and decided to race it at a Scotland track named Corbiewood, which just recently closed.

“He obviously enjoyed it and got into the breeding side of it,” O’Neil said. “I don’t think that first horse was any good. But he kind of got hooked from that stage and then my dad got really involved at around 12 or 13. That’s when he got his first horse and it kind of took off from there.”

They did their racing in Scotland, England and Wales, and by the time Hugh IV was born, his path in life was already set.

“I didn’t have any other choice; that’s what I was going to do,” he said. “My mom used to take me to the barn and put me in my cart or whatever, so I was there at the age of 2 or 3. I was 9 when I jogged my first horse. It was unbelievable. I loved it. I knew it then, that’s what I wanted.”

There was just one slight problem.

“You couldn’t make a living at it at home,” he said, “so I had to work as well and do that as a hobby — an expensive hobby.”

Like his dad, brother and three uncles, Hugh worked in his grandfather’s family business. Since students are allowed to leave school at age 15 in Scotland, Hugh did just that and worked fulltime for his grandfather while also working with his dad in the barn. Since Ayr was on Scotland’s southwest coast, they would often train horses on the beach and Hugh would get a few drives.

A year later, driving got serious.

“My dad actually stopped driving and gave me the full barn to drive when I was 16,” O’Neil said. “That made a big difference.”

Hugh’s main tracks were Corbiewood and York Raceway in England. He drove hard for 12 years but never got rich. He has no idea how many races he won or how much money he earned.

“No one ever keeps tabs of that stuff,” he said. “I couldn’t even tell you. I have no idea.”

The one thing he did know, is that he wanted to race in North America.

His mom had lived in Canada in her teens and Hugh toyed with trying to make a living there.

“We came to races there every year from the age of 5,” O’Neil said. “When I was around 12, I actually wanted to move to Canada, it was the only place I’d seen racing be as professional as it is. I always said, ‘I’m going to come over to Canada and the States to race horses.’ But for one reason or another it just never happened.”

When O’Neil was 24, he met his mom’s friend Anthony Haughan, a native of Dublin who raced in Canada. Haughan would visit the family and they would go out to dinner. When he returned to Canada, Hugh would go over each winter for about a month and work in the stables while he was “on holiday” as they say in the United Kingdom.

He continued to harbor hopes of setting up shop fulltime in Canada until Haughan gave him some advice.

“Anthony said, ‘If you get the chance, go to Florida,’ so I did that,” O’Neil said. “I got my visa and that was it.”

It wasn’t quite that simple. He still needed a contact.

As luck would have it, Hugh’s brother Michael was friends with the Wilders. Hugh met Heather when the couple attended the Vincent Delaney Memorial Race in Ireland. Mike Wilder has driven more than 8,500 winners in his career and last year, for the first time, he joined Altmeyer at Florida’s Spring Garden Ranch to prep 2-year-olds.

Hugh began pestering Mike to see if the Wilders needed help in Florida this past winter.

“I told him I’d like to go, the time is right to get away,” O’Neil said. “He messaged Heather, and they said yes.”

Hugh flew to Harrisburg in November and drove down to Florida with the Wilders. Heather is also immersed in the business and can often be seen interviewing harness racing personalities. The couple has been invaluable to O’Neil in terms of helping him learn about American racing and introducing him to contacts that can help him progress.

When O’Neil heads north, he will continue to work in the Wilders’ stable, but will also be searching for any drives he can get. He is encouraged by the fact that “Mike and Heather have introduced me to a lot of good people.”

O’Neil knows he has to start slowly; but his dream has always been to drive at Lexington’s Red Mile.

“I don’t know if it will happen, but I’d love to,” he said. “That was always the place I wanted to go to. I’d love to race there and love to race at The Meadowlands. But for right now my plan is to go to The Meadows, just pick up some drives there and see how I do.”

It truly is a new beginning for O’Neil, who lived in Ayr the first 27 years of his life. Things have changed rapidly over the past five months, but Hugh says “so far, so good.” He knows he can return to a steady job back home but is not thinking in those terms.

“There is that,” he said. “But I feel like I was always going to do everything I can to try and make it work. Mike and Heather and Dan have been giving guys my name and telling them that if they can, let me train some of their horses. It’s good, I can get a lot of training under me and just meet new people.”

It has all been worth it so far.

“I love it,” O’Neil said. “I said to Mike that there’s never a day I woke up so far and felt like I didn’t want to work. I enjoy it every day.”

Editor’s Note: Hugh O’Neil IV spoke with the U.S. Trotting Association’s Wendy Ross in a recent video interview at Spring Garden Ranch in Florida. To watch the complete interview, click here.

by Rich Fisher, for the USTA