IT'S ALL BERRY HARD WORK!

Martin Jenkins catches up with one of the most popular trainers in the game

- Martin Jenkins

Name: John Berry

Date of Birth: 7 June 1966

Birthplace: Hawick, Roxburghshire, Scottish Borders

Twitter: @johnwathenberry

Website: johnberryracing.com

How did you get into racing?

I was lucky enough to grow up on a farm and we had horses and ponies there. I wanted to be a jockey when I was young (which didn’t work out) so started work in a stable the day I left school. I worked for three trainers when I was young – Andy Turnell, Ian Matthews, Luca Cumani – then spent a year in Australia working in racing and then spent three years working on Wood Ditton Stud when I got back to the UK. I started training myself in 1995.

Where do you train?

I train in Beverley House Stables in Exeter Road, Newmarket. I started training over on the other side of town in 1995 and then moved into this stable two years later.

How many horses do you have?

Numbers go up and down a bit year by year, but we’re generally somewhere between a dozen and 20.

First runner/winner as a trainer?

My first runner was Witchway North in a hurdle race at Fakenham, during Cheltenham week in 1995. Shane Lyons rode her. My first winner came a couple of months later: Lorelei Lee at Beverley, ridden by Kieren Fallon.

Biggest winner so far?

Largesse in the Peugeot Doonside Cup at Ayr’s Western Meeting in 1998, ridden by John Egan. That was only my fourth season training and I still thought it was easy then, as one invariably does when one starts and is still too ignorant to know otherwise.