Tom Charlton, by his own admission, would be not telling the truth if he said he didn’t miss the green fields of England. Dark mornings at Randwick are a far cry from training in the Wiltshire countryside, where he grew up east of Bath.
“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t prefer it sometimes,” he tells The Straight. “I guess there’s this idea of England having more land and being more horse-friendly, and I loved growing up around that. But I’m pretty confident I won’t be going back.”
Charlton is just six weeks into a co-trainer position with Randwick’s John O’Shea. Recently, the new partnership sent out its first stakes winner, the expensive Schwarz, who fought out a narrow victory in the Group Two Missile Stakes at Randwick.
Like their first runner last month at Scone, the partnership’s first stakes performer was also a winner. Schwarz cost $1.25 million as a yearling and is raced by a key stable client, Rosemont Stud.
It’s been the best of starts for 29-year-old Charlton, a son of successful English trainer Roger Charlton. The industry is in his blood, but unlike many who romanticise ‘back home’, in particular the rural training idyll of England, Charlton is under no illusions.
“Here in Australia, you have access all year round to well-kept tracks and barrier trials, and all of those advantages that come with training in a city,” he says. “And also, in England, a lot of access to tracks is dictated by the weather, so as much as I might sometimes miss it, there is a lot more opportunity down here.”
Charlton realised this as long ago as 2018 when he brought Withhold to Australia with his father for a tilt at the Melbourne Cup. The gelding didn’t make the field thanks to a veterinary issue, but Charlton quickly recognised that Australian racing was bigger than his family name.
“In England, you’re more likely to get a job in racing if you have a background like mine,’ he says. ‘I didn’t enjoy that. I didn’t like that it was very often a case of ‘who you are’.
‘That doesn’t apply in Australia. Here, anyone can have any background and be successful if they work hard. It doesn’t matter who they are or where they come from, and I prefer that.”
At home in Wiltshire, Charlton’s older brother, Harry, has assumed the training operation of their father at Beckhampton House. Succession in horse racing is a hot topic, but Charlton says the UK racing picture isn’t as healthy as it was. He was happy to fossick for his own fortune.
In 2019, he flew back to Australia to take a job with John O’Shea, who was freshly returned to Randwick after three years with Godolphin. They were different men, O’Shea recently the subject of a comedic clip by Channel 7 about being racing’s scariest trainer, but they hit it off.
“John has been nothing but fantastic to me from day one,’ Charlton says. ‘He is very direct but he’s fair, and he brings out the best in people. I work very hard for him and he recognises that. I have loved every minute of being part of the team.”
O’Shea is what Charlton loves about Australian racing – a self-built success story. Originally from Queensland with a backstory in rugby league, O’Shea is today one of the foremost operators in Sydney racing.
He also knows what it takes to build and rebuild a career. Post Godolphin in 2017, he had to start all over again at Randwick, winning back clients and their good horses. For Charlton, the path to a trainer’s ticket has been different.
“About this time last year, I’d started thinking it might be time to go out on my own,’ he says. ‘I’d been with John since 2019 and I went to him for his opinion. We had the conversation and he came up with the idea of a partnership. We gave it some thought and some time, and waited to announce it on July 1.”
Training partnerships are now a mainstay of Australian racing. They were first introduced to NSW in 2008 in a bid to be consistent with other states.
By the rules of racing, a partnership cannot include more than three trainers (the Hawkes were the first of such in Australia), and the most famous partnerships today include Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott, Peter Moody and Katherine Coleman and the Lindsay Park brothers.
In Melbourne, Mathew De Kock took a similar path to Charlton, opting for a partnership with Robbie Griffiths after growing up under a famous training father, in his case Mike De Kock.
“My family has been very supportive,’ Charlton says. ‘But to be fair, when I first came here I didn’t think I was coming for good. It was only when I got here that I started thinking about it long-term.
“The industry isn’t what it was in the UK and I see my family working through that. My prospects are much better here and I’m pretty confident in saying that I will be staying in Australia.”
Charlton is now married to an Australian, Alana, and they live in Woollahra, close to Randwick. The Englishman loves Sydney and its vibrancy.
He says his career promotion hasn’t changed him, nor has it changed his everyday workload too much, but he’d like to think it has made O’Shea’s life easier. O’Shea says it has, but probably not in the way that most would expect.
“I still have to do what I do and I still have the financial burden of the operation, but what it does is it gives security to our owners, more than anything,’ O’Shea says.
‘I can’t be everywhere, and by having Tom there when I’m not there, it gives owners some assurance that someone is there looking after things. That, by definition, is a massive help.”
Over the years, O’Shea has been lucky to land European talent like Tom Charlton. He’s made the most of it while he’s had it.
“The key for me has always been embracing the enthusiasm and youth," he says. “Tom’s got some good ideas. He’s a good lad and it’s been a natural progression to this point. He’s worked for me for a while and earned his stripes.”
O’Shea didn’t set out to establish a training partnership in his yard. He’d been a sole trader for a long time, but he does recognise that the partnership option is an opportunity for up-and-comers that wasn’t around when he was coming through.
“The industry isn’t what it was in the UK and I see my family working through that. My prospects are much better here and I’m pretty confident in saying that I will be staying in Australia” - Tom Charlton
“It’s certainly a better option than how we used to start, which was five broken-down old horses in the back blocks of nowhere,” he says. “But from a business perspective, it makes sense.
“It was not something I ever thought I would do but it has developed through necessity and it really is about the individual. You have to find the right person and while I wasn’t necessarily looking to go into a partnership, Tom was a special person.”
Schwarz’s victory was stakes-win number 260 for O’Shea. Trackside, he was quick to allow his new partner all the fame and, for his part, Charlton was reluctant to be the star of the show.
“It’s great but I don’t deserve any of the accolades,” he told the media scrum at Randwick. “I am very thankful to John for the opportunity. I was in the right place at the right time.”
