On Tuesday, March 5, 1985, two young apprentice jockeys made their way to Sedgefield racecourse where each had been booked to ride in the Castle Eden Conditional Novices Chase (4.15).
20-year-old Sam Berry, son of the famous trainer Jack, was to ride Solares, trained by his father.
P. A. Farrell Jnr. was to ride Telegraph Bush.
For one, it was to end in disaster. Sam Berry 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 Novice Chase at Sedgefield was first run the next year on Tuesday, September 30, 1986. P. A. Farrell rode in the race.
Sam Berry, when well enough, bought himself an apartment at the Mar y Sol resort, Teneriffe, 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, Paddy's own father - Paddy Farrell Snr -became a paraplegic when he broke his back following 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 days 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.”
Paddy Farrell Snr. died on Saturday evening, November 20, 1999.
