A HORSE trained in North Yorkshire has grabbed one of the world's biggest prizes.
Mondialiste, trained by David O'Meara and ridden by stable jockey Danny Tudhope, finished strongly to win the £408,000 Arlington Million in Chicago.
The triumph comes 31 years after Teleprompter, trained by Bill Watts, in Richmond, North Yorkshire, won the same prestigious international race.
Former jump jockey O'Meara trains on the outskirts of York and has been one of the rising stars of the sport since taking out his trainer's licence in 2010, amassing more than 500 winners.
Mondialiste was second to Time Test on his last run at York and the five-year-old stayed on strongly in Chicago to beat Kasaqui, with Aidan O'Brien's Deauville third.
Tudhope said:“I couldn’t have worked out better. We’d gone over the race so many times but you don’t know how it’s going to go. It couldn’t have gone better, though.
“He seems to love it out here, he thrives out here. It’s amazing to win a race like this my first time here, it’s amazing for everyone at the yard.”
Mondialiste now earns an automatic entry into the Breeders' Cup Classic.
O’Meara told NBC: “We stepped him up to a mile and a quarter at York and he ran a really good race behind Time Test and once we saw he handled the trip this race was in the back of our minds. Once he ran so well over that, the fact he ran so well when we travelled him last year, we were always going to come.
“He won at Woodbine last year and that was a win and you’re in for the Breeders’ Cup and he was second in the Mile so I don’t so a reason we won’t come back again. The owner will have the final say.”