About Tom George
page introduction
Tom has lived at Down Farm all of his life and is proud to call it his childhood home. The 400-acre farm has always been home to horses with Tom’s father having numerous hunters and point to pointers there. Since taking out his first training license in 1993 Tom and his wife Sophie have continuously developed the farm into a state of the art place to train thoroughbred racehorses.
After leaving Gordonstoun School in Scotland aged 17 Tom always knew that training racehorses was the path he wanted to go down. Thus, he established a thorough grounding in the horse racing industry through stints with the British Bloodstock Agency, Gavin Pritchard-Gordon and the late Michael Jarvis. Later followed by spells with François Doumen and Champion Trainer Martin Pipe. These experiences gave Tom a strong knowledge on a variety of training regimes along with essential insight into the selection of the right conformation for a thoroughbred.
From Tom’s first winner, Newton Point at Worcester, in September 1993, Tom has striven tirelessly to put his experience and intuitive knowledge of the Thoroughbred to good effect for his horses and their owners. Enabling him to now say he has saddled over 700 winners as a trainer, 10 of which at the highest Grade 1 level. Including numerous successes at the three major National Hunt festivals at Cheltenham, Aintree and Punchestown.
Tom has been at the forefront of exploring new bloodstock markets to seek value for his owners. An example of this was 17 horses from Poland, resulting in 14 individual winners and over £300,000 in prize money, including Cheltenham winner Galileo at the 2002 Festival.
More recently, Irish bred horses and their Point-to-Point graduates have been a continuous source of winners for Tom with the likes of Grade 1 Winners at the Aintree Grand National Festival Black Op and The Worlds End. Along with triple Grade 1 winner God’s Own and our most recent Cheltenham Festival winner Summerville Boy in 2018 all coming from these spheres.
French bred horses have also demonstrated Tom’s talents, with the likes of Nacarat, winner of multiple graded races and £1/2m in prize money. Along with Halley, winner of the €300,000 Group 1 Prix Maurice Gillois Steeplechase at Auteuil and 2nd in the 2015 Grand National Saint Are.
Tom is always well assisted in the saddle at the races with a strong team of professional jockeys regularly riding work and schooling horses at Down Farm. This includes Ciaran Gethings, Jonathan Burke, Tom Scudamore and James Bowen showing that the horses never lack for aid from the saddle.
The continuity of the team at Down Farm and the careful buying, placement and training of the equine team, has ensured a level of consistency difficult to rival elsewhere, an excellent win & place to runner ratio, an improving quality of stock, and above all, enormous fun for all involved.