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Ian Williams, Trainer
 Horseracing
has been in Ian's blood from an early age with his father Billy (W.R.) training in the West Country.
Initially, Ian was not drawn to a similar career but, a year at college studying
Business & Accountancy persuaded him that horses weren’t too bad after all.
At 18, Ian went
to Lambourn to join Jenny Pitman as Assistant Trainer. This was the
vintage era of Royal Athlete, Garrison Savannah, Toby Tobias
et al, and was a formative period in Ian's development.
Ian admits he knew very little when joining Mrs Pitman, and was
most grateful for the opportunity and responsibility given by
Jenny.
In the early
90's, Ian spent 6 months with Martin Pipe at Pond House before joining Francois Doumen
at Chantilly in France. His time there
coincided with a golden age for the yard with The Fellow landing a couple of King George’s
as well as the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
In 1997, Ian returned to Britain to begin
his own journey as a trainer. Initially based near Oxford, with
just a dozen horses, half of which came from the ever supportive
John and Anne Poynton; very quickly it became obvious that
these facilities were not to the standard the ambitious
Williams required. Fortunately, Brendan Powell introduced Ian
to Patrick Kelly, a very successful businessman, who shared a
passion for horseracing. Mr Kelly had a vision to create a state of the art
training facility in the heart of the Midlands and together, they created
the amazing training complex of Dominion Racing Stables.
There are currently 75 horses in training and the yard has had
over 500 winners, but Ian remains fiercely ambitious and
continues on the quest for champions. As the tag line on
the website says "Passion to succeed never dies."
Ian's objectives are
simple - improve the quality of the string and continue
to saddle winners, most importantly the elusive Festival
winner.
As a trainer of
both national hunt and flat horses, Ian has many career
highlights. These include Baddam's Glorious Goodwood
win; Bambi De L'Orme's Red Rum Handicap Chase win at Aintree;
Batman Senora's Listed Hurdle and Grade 1 Chase wins at
Auteuil; Brewster's Grade 1 Challow Hurdle win, his gallant
3rd in the Brit Insurance Novices' Hurdle at the Cheltenham
Festival which was closely followed up by his brave 2nd in the
Sefton Novices' Hurdle at Aintree; Bulwark's Chester Cup win;
Lord York's amazingly consistent career and The Prince's hug
success for his long time friend and landlord, Mr Patrick
Kelly.
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