Dual-purpose jockey Lucy Barry rode 37 British winners during her career, her best season coming when recording 19 on the Flat in 2011.
She started out point-to-pointing for the late John Manners before making her name as an apprentice for Clive Cox. She gained a lot of success in her first year, however she soon found herself battling the scales.
Over jumps the best horse she rode was the Amy Murphy-trained mare Hawthorn Cottage – a horse Lucy bought at a Cheltenham sale in December 2017 – on whom she won four times. They won a mares’ bumper at Cheltenham at 25-1 in April 19, 2018 then won two handicap hurdles in the 2019/20 season, at Doncaster in January and Plumpton in February.
The 5lb claimer ended her career in the saddle on a winning note by riding Hawthorn Cottage to a narrow victory in the three-mile South West Syndicate Novices’ Handicap Chase at Warwick’s evening meeting on May 26, 2021 for owners Melbourne 10 Racing. Having led throughout, Lucy kicked Hawthorn Cottage clear on the home turn and just held on to score by a neck.
She announced her retirement after the race, aged 29, saying that winning on Hawthorn Cottage had been “the last piece of the puzzle”.
She told the Racing Post the following day: “Melbourne 10 have been my biggest supporters over the last six years and I started buying their jump horses; Hawthorn Cottage was the first horse I ever bought for them.”
She then spoke of how her weight issues had got the better of her and she had struggled with mental health issues.
“With that came the pressures that I put on myself and I ended up on a slippery slope of eating disorders and depression,” she said.
“I wasn’t race-riding for three years and only came back because I didn’t know what else to do. I still wasn’t the lightest and it never took off again. I ended up in hospital with stomach problems because I wasn’t eating and trying to keep my weight down so much. I wasn’t healthy. I decided to go back jumping and a lot of people thought I was mad. Every year was a struggle to get my licence back because I hadn’t had enough rides.”
She added that those issues played a “massive” role in her decision to hang up her boots and that she would now focus on buying more stock for the Melbourne 10 as well as managing a farm for owner Ian Barratt.
