Jack Berry
Jack Berry MBE has been racing’s greatest fundraiser and today we salute his tireless devotion to welfare in the sport by inducting him into the QIPCO British Champions Series Hall of Fame. Just the third person to be recognised within the Special Contributor category, he follows closely in the footsteps of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Khalid bin Abdullah.
The journeyman jump-jockey-turned-top-trainer-turned-charity-champion was instrumental in the Injured Jockeys’ Fund (IJF) being founded 60 years ago and it was his vision that led to Oaksey House, in Lambourn, Berkshire, and Jack Berry House, in Malton, Yorkshire, being established in 2009 and 2015 respectively.
These outstanding rehabilitation and fitness centres have benefited countless jockeys, providing specialist treatment for physical and neurological injuries, plus respite accommodation for those receiving extended treatment together with their carers if required. They have hydrotherapy pools and state-of-the-art gyms, and offer educational courses on fitness and nutrition. Peter O’Sullevan House in Newmarket (2019) and The Taunton South West Hub (2022) have also followed.
The IJF has also helped provide support for more than 1,000 jockeys and their families, paying out more than £22m in charitable assistance. Its services are accessible to anyone who holds or has held a racing licence (and their dependents) and is in need. Its core values are compassion, care and support.
Berry, 87, remains the IJF’s Vice President and has raised incalculable amounts of money with his initiatives, energy and powers of persuasion. He was deservingly awarded an MBE in 1996 for charitable services and for services to horseracing.
His glass is rarely anything but three quarters full and he would no doubt tell you that the word “impossible” includes the word “possible”. The pioneer famous for wearing red shirts and other garments of the same colour, which he has always regarded as lucky, is an intoxicating blend of warmth, optimism, determination, intelligence and hard work.
Born in Leeds in 1937, the fourth eldest of eight children, Berry sandwiched schooling in between work at the stables of his father, Harry, before starting to ride out for trainer Charlie Hall at the age of 13. Two years later, he was apprenticed before serving National Service with the King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery, in London. He resented the interruption to his own ambitions but admitted it taught him manners, respect and discipline.
He led up Hall’s 1956 Champion Hurdle winner, Doorknocker, at Cheltenham, but his own 16-year riding career, which had begun on May 22, 1954, at Pontefract, was blighted by setbacks. He rode 47 winners, estimating he broke 46 bones along the way. A ratio of about one victory per fracture is not the currency any rider would wish for, but Berry became addicted to the thrill of flying over fences at more than 30mph.
It was not his own travails that led to the IJF being founded, but a devastating injury suffered by his close weighing-room friend, Paddy Farrell. The 33-year-old, married with four young children, was paralysed after a fall from Border Flight at the infamous jump ‘The Chair’ whilst taking part in the 1964 Grand National. His terrible accident came soon after another Jump jockey, Tim Brookshaw, had suffered a similar fate.
At the time there was no system in place to compensate or help injured jockeys, so Berry and his colleagues took it upon themselves to raise some cash. The Farrell/Brookshaw Fund was set up originally to facilitate their recuperation, before the pair asked that all jockeys should benefit.
“Paddy was my best mate and I was one of the jockeys who went round with buckets to collect money for him,” he said. “There was a queue half a furlong long when we announced we would be collecting at Wetherby one day. If you like, that was the start of the Injured Jockeys’ Fund.”
Berry’s youngest son, Sam, would also need the help of the organisation 21 years later. Aged just 19, he suffered a fall at Sedgefield that left him permanently disabled. His highly promising career was over in an instance.
Sam would go on to settle in Tenerife and it was after visiting him one winter that Berry Sr had another lightbulb moment. Why not give other seriously injured jockeys an annual sunshine holiday abroad among kindred spirits? They have since provided a tonic to those in attendance for more than 30 years and counting.
An Oaksey House seed was planted in Berry’s mind long before when he broke a knee in five places from a fall at Wetherby. Dr de Brue, The Jockey Club’s doctor, advised him to go to the Camden Town centre in London to rehabilitate. The doctor also advised Berry to go via the Levy Board to fund his rehabilitation, as there was no financial support in place for jockeys at this time. It took more than a year for Berry’s leg to heal, during which he had to travel to the London rehabilitation centre every single weekend. Many years later, when the IJF had a surplus of funds, he suggested something similar be built, so that jockeys would not have to face the same challenges as he.
“It took me three years to get it past the (IJF) trustees that we needed Oaksey House, and I always had it in my mind that we needed another one in the north,” he said. Berry said the latter should be called “Our House” but his modesty was rejected. Jack Berry House was all but the house Jack built, and quite rightly it bears his name.
Berry had previously hit the heights as a trainer. In 1969, with the support of his wife, Jo, a constant at his side for the past six decades, he took out a licence from a small yard near Doncaster before buying a run-down farm at Cockerham, near Morecambe in Lancashire, three years later.
The husband-and-wife double act transformed the place into Moss Side Racing Stables and it became one of the most successful yards in Britain. Berry trained 1,657 winners during his 30-year training career, with his star performers including top-class sprinters Paris House and Mind Games.
Nobody trained more winners than him in 1990, when he had 127 victories, and the following year he chalked up the quickest ever century of winners (beating Henry Cecil’s previous best by six days). He excelled with two-year-olds, moulding inexpensive yearlings into winners time and time again. He chalked up a remarkable 97 juvenile winners in 1991.
But he was no one-trick pony. He had three winners at Royal Ascot in 1998 via Rosselli (Norfolk Stakes), Selhurstpark Flyer (Wokingham) and Bolshoi (King’s Stand, now King Charles III Stakes), and one of his proudest days came when So Careful landed the Ayr Gold Cup a decade earlier. He had always craved having the winner of the six-furlong cavalry charge. Quiz masters should also note that he provided Lester Piggott with his final winner, Palacegate Jack, at Haydock in 1994.
Berry would often rise before the crack of dawn to start work, to avoid being disturbed, and usually went everywhere with his horses, clocking up hundreds of thousands of miles on the motorways. He revelled in the exploits of his favourite, O I Oysten, who won 26 races and lived to the age of 31. “He was a brilliant horse, I loved him to bits,” Berry said on Racing TV’s Luck On Sunday in 2018. “If I could have built a new house, I’d have given him a box so he could look into the kitchen. I adored him.”
He had an affinity with all his horses, and animals in general. These days his companions include an emu.
In recent years, he has been diagnosed with cancer. “I don’t take any notice of it. I just carry on,” he said in a recent interview with the Racing Post. “I live every day as it comes and still work my socks off.” And anybody lucky enough to have spent any time in his company, would expect nothing less.
Berry becomes the 12th person to be inducted into the QIPCO British Champions Series Hall of Fame after Queen Elizabeth II, Lester Piggott, Vincent O’Brien, Pat Eddery, Frankie Dettori MBE, Willie Carson OBE, Sir Henry Cecil, Prince Khalid bin Abdullah, Steve Cauthen, Sir Michael Stoute and Aidan O’Brien.
