Noel started training in 1970 with one horse, Tu Va, owned in partnership with his great friend, Mick Condra.  Tu Va was bought at Goffs in Ballsbridge for 100gns from Buster Harty.  That one horse was the seed to a career which has now spanned five decades, with just short of 3000 winners, 7 Champion National Hunt Trainer titles, and 10 Leading Trainer awards.

TuVa (centre) with Noel onboard

Over the years, Noel has been lucky enough to win most of the major National Hunt races in Ireland.  Originally he trained mostly flat horses but moved more towards jumpers from the early 90’s, and in the last couple of years has starting training quite a number of flat horses as well.

In no particular order, the following is a list of some of the very good horses that Noel has trained over the years:

Sweet Mint; La Samana; Steel Duke; Pinch Hitter; Melodic; Street Rebel; Sunshine Street; Johnny Setaside; Fane Ranger; Jered; Tianamen Square; Heist; Sausalito Bay; Nicanor; Go Native; Harchibald; Pandorama; Aran Concerto; Sweet Wake; Iktitaf; Harbour Pilot; Muirhead; Definite Spectacle; Scottish Memories; Realt Dubh; Cross Appeal; Wild Passion; Thari; Glencloud; The Bunny Boiler; Snow Falcon; Monksland; Darjini; Bective Road; Atherstone; Cardinal Hill; Geilsli; Jazz Messenger; Nomadic; Leading Run; Strong Run; Mr Nosie; Frozen Groom; Sydney Two Thousand; Apache Stronghold; Sir OJ; Road to Riches; Road to Respect; Disko; Watson Lake; Aitmatov; Very Wood; Cockney Lad

Derville Meade

Derville has recently joined the team in an official capacity and is now looking after all our social media pages, and keeping our owners updated on how their horses are with video/photo updates etc from the yard and from the track.