Sam Berry

Sam Berry

Martin Stratford Berry, known to everyone as Sam, was kept busy during the first half of the 1980s, riding under both codes, registering six wins on the Flat and eight over jumps.

His first win on the level was at Wolverhampton on July 20, 1981, when Sailord, trained by his famous father Jack, took the lead inside the final furlong and ran on to take the Threadbare Selling Handicap by three-quarters of a length. 

A few weeks later he had his first ride under National Hunt rules when the four-year-old Copper Watch, also trained by Jack Berry, stayed on under pressure to take the Hexham National Hunt Flat Race on September 7 by three-quarters of a length. 

Then it was back to the Flat for a win on the popular sprinter O.I. Oyston on March 26, 1982, the second day of the season, at Doncaster. 

Over the course of the next three years, Sam continued to ply his trade under both codes, as an apprentice on the Flat and a conditional over jumps.

On Tuesday, March 5, 1985, two young jockeys made their way to Sedgefield racecourse where each had been booked to ride in the Castle Eden Conditional Novices’ Chase (4.15). Twenty-year-old Sam Berry was to ride Solares, trained by his father, while Patrick Farrell was to ride Telegraph Bush. 

For one, it was to end in disaster. Sam fell from Solares, fracturing his skull. He was rushed to Middlesbrough Central Hospital where his life hung in the balance for several days.

Miraculously, he slowly recovered and, on Monday, May 13, 1985, had made sufficient progress to be moved to Preston Hospital. Jack Berry said “Sam is saying a few words. The move to Preston will be a big benefit to us because it is only a few miles away compared with a 112 miles trip to Middlesbrough.”

The Sam Berry Novices’ Chase at Sedgefield was first run the next year on Tuesday, September 30, 1986. Patrick Farrell rode in the race.

Sam, when well enough, bought himself an apartment at the Mar-Y-Sol resort, Tenerife, designed for the disabled.

One Christmas, his father visited him and could see the good it was doing him. Jack Berry said: “I counted the other ex-jockeys I knew who would benefit from it and, by the time I went home, I was determined to bring them out here.”

He then raised more than £40,000 to fund the first holiday; an unexpected cheque for £1 million pounds from racehorse owner Robert Hitchins donated in memory of his wife, Elizabeth, helped lift the financial burden. The annual spring trip is now a regular holiday, paid for by the Injured Jockeys' Fund.

A benefactor once said of the scheme: “How does one describe the magic of Mar-Y-Sol? If you can imagine a National Hunt weighing room. With 35 happy jockeys – even if most are in wheelchairs! – put that in the sun by a warm pool, add a drink or two of an evening, some cards and fun games and you might be nearly there! It is by far the best prescription any doctor or specialist could give for all sorts of problems – and it is by far the best thing we do.”

It was here, in Tenerife, that Sam Berry met Carole Philips. She was the cook at Henry Candy’s stables. Carole had recently lost her husband Dougie, Candy’s popular travelling head groom.

Sam and Carol fell in love and, in September 2003, they married. Among the 160 reception guests at The Star in Sparsholt were the former champion jockeys Fred Winter and Jack Dowdwswell. Lord Oaksey also attended.

Carole said of Sam, “We clicked the first time we met and soon became firm friends. I don’t know what I’d do without him.”

Sam, for his part, was delighted to have inherited the three step-children; Paul, who became an amateur jockey, Kelly, the partner of jockey Fergus Sweeney, and Kim, partner of John Hughes who ran a horse transport business in Lambourn.

Sam and Carole spent their honeymoon on a tour of racecourses in the north.

For Sam’s passenger that March afternoon in 1985, tragedy was not a stranger.

Riding Border Flight in the 1964 Grand National, Patrick’s own father, Paddy Farrell, became a paraplegic when he broke his back in a fall at the Chair. With four children under seven to support, a group of his fellow riders began to collect money to enable him to move from his house near York to a brand-new bungalow.

“As soon as Paddy was taken away from the track, us jockeys knew he would never walk again,” said his friend Jack Berry. “He had a wife and four kids, and we felt we had to do everything we could to help him out.

“The following Tuesday, there was a meeting at Wetherby and a group of us – people like myself, Nimrod Wilkinson and Jack Boddy – went around collecting money in buckets. We called it the Paddy Farrell Fund.

“The response was incredible. The bookmakers were throwing ten-pound notes in, which back then was an awful lot of money, and everyone was so supportive.

“The Sporting Life and Sporting Chronicle got on board and said that if anybody donated a fiver, they would print their name in the paper.

“We raised enough money for the bungalow in next to no time and decided to give some of the left-over to Tim Brookshaw, a lad who had got injured in a hurdle race a couple of months before the National. So it became the Farrell-Brookshaw Fund.

“Then, as more jockeys got injured in the future, it grew into the National Hunt Jockeys Fund. And finally, as some of the Flat lads started to need help as well, it became the Injured Jockeys Fund that you know today.”

Tim Brookshaw died on the morning of Sunday, November 8, 1981, aged 52. Paddy Farrell died on Saturday evening, November 20, 1999, aged 69.

Sam Berry’s winners on the Flat were, in chronological order:

1. Sailord, Wolverhampton, July 20, 1981

2. O.I. Oyston, Doncaster, March 26, 1982

3. Shiny Hour, Salisbury, May 6, 1982

4. Up The North, Hamilton Park, June 17, 1982

5. Gale Boy, Newcastle, May 13, 1983

6. Taffy Jones, Edinburgh, May 21, 1984

Sam Berry’s winners over jumps were, in chronological order

1. Copper Watch, Hexham, September 7, 1981

2. Cambourne Hill, Perth, September 22, 1983

3. Cambourne Hill, Hexham, October 19, 1983

4. Selbourne Record, Newcastle, October 26, 1983

5. Solares, Carlisle, January 2, 1984

6. Solares, Haydock Park, March 3, 1984

7. Solares, Ayr, March 10, 1984

8. Wiggburn, Ludlow, February 6, 1985