Terry Barry

Terrence Paul Barry had three wins under National Hunt rules, beginning with victory in the Grunwick N.H. Flat Race at Worcester on October 7, 1989. He was actually second past the post but his mount, Tee Qu, had been badly hampered a furlong from the finish. The original winner, Corbitt’s Diamond, was disqualified and placed second. 

Tee Qu was trained by former top jump jockey Jeff King, for whom Terry rode as a conditional, and it was he who also supplied Terry’s second winner the following month, this time over fences. At Kempton on November 15, the eight-year-old Master Feathers narrowly held the challenge of Rambling Song to land the Staines Conditional Jockeys’ Handicap Chase by half a length. 

Terry had to wait almost a year for his third, and final, success, by which time he was based with Ferdy Murphy, who was then training privately for owner Geoff Hubbard. It came at Newbury on November 7, 1990, when Sibton Abbey led all the way to take the Chequers Conditional Jockeys’ Handicap Hurdle by two lengths. Sibton Abbey did not run again until the following August but would go on to win the 1992 Hennessy Gold Cup and other good races.  

Terry had almost 30 rides during that 1989/90 season but did not win again. Indeed, one of his last rides ended in controversy. At Fakenham on Easter Monday he finished second on Ferdy Murphy’s Emsee-H in a novices’ hurdle, beaten five lengths by Steve Smith Eccles’ mount Duo Drom, trained by Mrs Di Haine. Terry objected to the winner on grounds of interference but the objection was overruled. 

That was certainly not how Smith Eccles saw it. Writing in his book ‘The Last of the Cavaliers’ he recalled the incident somewhat differently, having led from the fifth flight.

“For a couple of hundred yards there was no inside running rail. I kept a straight course and was not best pleased when I sensed one trying to cut off the corner and pass me on the inside. I spotted the distinctive green and white colours of Geoffrey Hubbard and knew they were being carried by a big Irish lad named Terry Barry, a seven-pound claimer who had joined Hubbard after a spell with Jeff King. Half turning towards him, I told him not even to try it, but he kept coming  until, with the rail only a few yards away, and my horse as straight as it had been, he had nowhere to go. His primitive solution was to torpedo my horse, turning him sideways and costing me ground, momentum and temper.

“I recovered to win the race easily but the public address was announcing a stewards’ enquiry even as I pulled up. The dopey kid could hardly have chosen a worse place to carve me up, right under the stewards’ box, and as we went to weigh in I told him bluntly what I thought of his intelligence. 

“It turned into an ugly scene and I thought I was in trouble when I landed my best punch, right on his chin, and his only reaction was to shake his head. He was so much bigger than me that it would have been ruled a boxing mismatch but he made the mistake of lashing out at me with his boot. I caught his foot and twisted him to the floor, where he stayed until some of the other jockeys pulled us apart.”