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This article was written by Chris Pitt, author of the acclaimed racing books
'A Long Time Gone' and 'Go Down To The Beaten'.
Born on July 16, 1929, Bernard Wells’ racing career began in 1946 when he became apprenticed to Dick Langley, who trained at Brook Farm, Beoley,
near Redditch. He had his first ride on Monday 12 January 1948 in a Leicester selling hurdle, on a 16-year-old horse named Pinkcoat who was only two years younger than his rider.
He rode his first winner on Saltwort at Woore Hunt on 11 May 1950. Bernard later said of Woore racecourse 'it felt as though you were going round on the inside of a saucepan.'
His second came a fortnight later on For Ever More at Buckfastleigh.
A five-day spell over Easter 1952 saw him partner three winners, three seconds and a fourth from seven rides. The run began at Southwell on the Saturday with Valley Forge winning the selling hurdle and Furry Glen finishing second in a two-mile chase. It was a similar story at Huntingdon on Easter Monday, winning the handicap hurdle on Dirty Weather and being narrowly denied a double when Musbah finished second in the seller. Then at Cheltenham’s two-day fixture, he came second on Pactus over fences on Wednesday, then won Thursday’s selling hurdle on 20-1 shot Lower Deck.
The 1952/53 season brought five winners from 82 rides, including two for Syd Mercer: Bonnie Royal at Newton Abbot and Pactus at Warwick. Pactus also gave him a memorable ride in the 1953 Topham Trophy, finishing fifth behind Dick Francis on Irish Lizard. That was the only occasion on which Bernard rode over the Aintree fences.
Bernard riding Conrad in the Tollmarsh Novices' Hurdle at Buckfastleigh on 31 August 1957.
He's on the left wearing the diamond colours, number 5
His four winners in 1953/54 came two apiece on three-mile chaser Mont St Michel and long-distance hurdler Perle Fine VII. But his season – and the next one too – came to a crashing end at Southwell in May 1954 when a chaser called Dandy gave him a back-breaking fall. Complications included a brain clot and also involved several operations on his legs.
Returning to the fray proved difficult and during the next three seasons he rode only one winner. But then along came a filly named French Knot.
The partnership got off to an inauspicious start when she jumped a wire fence at Buckfastleigh and ended up on the A38. The following week she ran out again at Newton Abbot and jumped the open ditch, a fair effort for a juvenile hurdler. Later that season she collided with an iron railing at Birmingham.
However, the following campaign (1957/58) she was a reformed character, winning two novice hurdles and being placed three times from six starts in the opening month. But the season that had begun so well soon turned sour when a novice chaser named Conrad fell when challenging at the last at Newton Abbot. Bernard climbed back on the horse to finish fourth but he was subsequently found to have broken his neck in three places.
He returned in 1958 and scored his only success on the Flat, courtesy of French Knot in a mile-and-a-half Catterick maiden. But it was to be two more years before his next jumping success.
The 1960/61 was Bernard’s best numerically, with six winners from 95 rides. Three of those victories came on the tubed novice chaser Lively Hopkins (half-brother to northern chaser Wiser Child) firstly at Buckfastleigh’s final meeting in August 1960, then at Fontwell Park and Southwell.
His last winner was on Pirate’s Port at Uttoxeter’s Easter fixture in 1961. Two years later he hung up his riding boots but he went on to train successfully from his Tanwood Stud yard, on the outskirts of Chaddesley Corbett, sending out winners not only in Britain but also in Jersey and Belgium. His Swing Free won a £10,000 race at Ostend in 1988.
Bernard Wells on Betty's Son (9) takes a fence alongside Allen's Bridge (S. Barnes, left), Meldrum Bay (E. Godfrey, 4) and the blinkered Column (P Pickford) in the Childrey Selling Chase at Newbury on 29 December, 1951
Photos courtesy Chris Pitt
After a riding career that included a broken back, broken neck and a twice fractured skull, it’s no surprise that Bernard’s reply to the question “highlight of career” in the 1961 edition of Directory of the Turf was: “Still living!”
Bernard Wells died at home in January 2014, aged 84.
He rode a total of 26 winners including one on the Flat, these being in chronological order:
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