FINE RECORD OF R. B. BERRY

Southland Times, Issue 23443, 25 February 1938, Page 10

FINE RECORD OF R. B. BERRY

has trained many CHAMPIONS

TRAMPFAST WAS ONE OF THE GREATEST

p B. Berry is one of the many valuable recruits to the light-harness sport who was originally associated with the thoroughbreds and who, like others, was forced out of the saddle by increasing weight. As a youth Beiry was apprenticed to Free Holmes, and later rode for M. Hobbs and T. Quinlivan. His most important success among many winning mounts on the gallopers was with Linauis in the New Zealand Cup. Berry was ranked among the best jockeys of his day, and later, when riding the pacers, his services grew in demand.

It was on his return from the Great War that Berry turned his attention to the trotters, and the first horse he trained and drove was Coldwater with whom he won races and earned the respect of prominent owners and trainers.

It was the Bingen mares that played the big part in placing Berry on the road to success, just as truly as Berry proved that the Bingen mares, properly handled, were equal as race mares to those of any other breed. It should be explained here that because of their nervy and fiery temperament, Bingen mares had let themselves in for almost general prejudice, and many of the breed were not even raced because of this set against them. ESCAPADE A CHAMPION Berry was the man who gave the critics something to think about, because the Bingen mares made Berry in return for his establishing them in champion class. The first great Nelson Bingen mare he sent to the top was Escapade, and she not only beat the best of her own gait, but beat pacers bordering on Cup class. She retired the champion trotting mare of her day. Sea Pearl and Jean McElwyn were two pacing daughters of Nelson Bingen who took high honours. Sea Pearl won the Otahuhu Cup and Adams Memorial Cup, and was a big money-winner tor the stable. Jean McElwyn was one of the most consistent pacers of her day, and continued to come up smiling after a number of busy seasons. She was seldom out of a place, and one day at Greymouth she beat badly a field of New Zealand Cup, candidates. Jean McElwyn was the epitome of courage, and was the “pocket battleship” of her time, standing little over 14 hands. She was a great favourite with the public. Berry set the fashion in Bingen trotters of the “weaker” sex, and other stables followed. The next two squaregaited champion mares were Olive Nelson, by Nelson Bingen, and Worthy Queen, a grand-daughter of the Bingen horse. Berry has a sister to Worthy Queen in work and although she favours the pacing gait, she still holds her place in the New Zealand Trotting Stakes. AUSTRALIAN PACER The Australian pacer Machine Gun was another good stake-earner for the Berry stable, and ended up in New Zealand Cup company. So did Dundas Boy, a fine stayer who was placed in a New Zealand Cup division and final. Bingen' Starr was another trotter who won good races in Metropolitan company, but his place, was taken by Koro Peter, who put up a remarkable performance at a Metropolitan August meeting by winning the opening event each day. White Satin, whose three-year-old trotting records for a filly still stand, was one of the greatest juvenile trotters ever raced in the Dominion. Berry soon had her winning among the good ones, and she was a fine mare in conformation and action. She later went into W. J. Tomkinson’s stable, and won the last race she contested, being retired as a seven-year-old and sold to the Tasmanian stud master, Mr E. Tatlow. Another unfounded idea that Berry exploded was that the Wracks could not act on soft tracks. White Satin proved that she could handle any kind of track, an early indication that the Wracks were not so bad under heavy conditions. A lot of the talk about the Wracks being only fine-weather horses was killed by Berry from the outset. He said at the time that there are horses of any breed that are useless in heavy going, but that many of any breed usually come to light as good allrounders. He was right about the Wracks. PROVED THEMSELVES

Not long afterwards they proved themselves outstanding on wet tracks— Indianapolis, Reporter, Sea Gift, and Colorado were a few who won under some of the worst conditions imaginable, and Walter Wrack, now trained by Berry, went the best race of his career on a softening track at Hutt Park recently. Berry made his mistakes, however. He had his prejudices and his early experiences with progeny of Rey de Oro made tha°t breed taboo to him for many years. He would not have one of them near the stable if he could avoid it; yet it was a Rey de Oro who eventually made Berry a trainer of t classic winners, this being none other than Parisienne, winner of the trotting triple crown, the Sapling Stakes, New Zealand Derby and Great Northern Derby, and who has since climbed to New Zealand Cup company as a four-year-old. For her age she has taken the highest rank a filly has yet attained in New Zealand, and will do still better. Two of the greatest old die-hards Berry trained were Rollo and Trampfast. They were different in one important respect: Rollo was brainless; Trampfast was the knowing “one-eyed gunner,” as the stable-lads used to call him. Rollo was developed by Berry and became a great stayer, but he was a problem on the mark. He had no idea of how to begin once he made a mis-step at the start. Once on the journey, however, he never knew how to give in. Trampfast, on the other hand, was intelligent, game and reliable. He was well into double figures when Berry took him in hand again, but he proved an evergreen 14-year-old, and, in spite of 18 months’ absence from racing, he regained his form and won the Dominion Handicap, a race he had been unlucky to lose years before. He won other races, too, and would still be going if class trotters were catered for. Berry’s other classic winners are Valdor (Great Northern Derby) and Horsepower, who won the first North Island Challenge Cup for two-year-olds, last season, and the Champion Stakes at Ashburton on Boxing Day, and the Great Northern Derby. Berry realized his life’s ambition last November when he won the New Zealand Trotting Cup with Lucky Jack. It was the second “leg” of a coveted double—the galloping and trotting cups. Sinapis was the first “leg,” and he had been trying for years with some good pacers to finish it off. With Dundas Boy, half-brother to Lucky Jack, he finished third, and he had visions of gaining his objective with another member of the same family, Dundee, but that speedy customer went wrong and it was left to the Jack Potts chestnut to do the deed in the premier event.