Berry’s Reset: Leaner, hungrier and chasing the crown

Tommy Berry wasn’t happy at the end of last season. The results weren’t as he expected them to be, and with only 84 winners for the term, even though there were two Group 1s, that hurt him.

He sat down with his manager Paul Joice wanting to find answers.

“Results tell you how you are going and they weren’t there,” Berry said. “I’m usually in the top-three of the premiership in Sydney, just behind James [McDonald], but I had slipped to sixth or seventh.”

“It’s not where I wanted to be.”

“Joicey and I had a chat and I had a reset.”

Part of it was a break in Bali, but on his way there, Berry fell ill. It felt like everything was turning to shit.

Instead, it was a turning point.

“I got there, and I was in bed for the first five or six days, I was so crook,” Berry said. “I would usually have been having a good time and a few drinks, but I wasn’t able to do that.”

“Instead of coming back 62 kilos, I was 58, and I came back and got training and riding.”

“It meant I can ride a kilo or two lighter now. That gives you more chances. It just worked out well.”

Joice remembers the conversation with his jockey and knows him so well.

“With Tommy the drive is there, you had to manage him in different ways,” Joice said. “He will ride work and wants to ride all the time if you let him. Sometimes that’s not the best for him as a person.”

“He is back in the gym six days a week and it’s showing on the track and off it.”

Berry already has 43 winners in four months of this season, a Group 1 from Apocalyptic in the Flight Stakes. He has won 13 black type races this term as opposed to 16 in total in 2024-25.

But more importantly, the passion is there, riding is not a chore, more of a pleasure.

“It’s easier when you’re riding winners, but I feel good,” he said. “I’m looking forward to get to the races.”

“I have time for the kids and life is different now, but at the moment it is great.”

Berry sees himself in the top echelon of jockeys in the country, and with a 20 per cent strike rate this season, which is unmatched in his career, he is set for a career and dream fulfilling season.

“The thing Joicey has done for me is that if I have a big week, he will tell me I’m not going to a provincial meeting the next week. In the past, I just wanted to ride all the time,” Berry said.

”I know at my best I’m up with James, and I still want to win a Sydney title. That is always there.”

“We had that season where we both rode 100 winners for the year but he got me, and I have wanted to have another crack at it since then.”

“But we have picked our targets.”

One of those targets was to go to Doomben on Saturday, rather than stay in Sydney.

“I wanted to stay on Caballus [who he won on at the Flemington carnival] and there was a two-year-old Stakes race as well, and there wasn’t much in Sydney,” Berry said.

“Caballus is a horse you want to stick with, I have a good ride in the two-year-old for Chris Waller [Snitska in the Phelan Ready Stakes] and a nice ride in John Dory for him as well.

“With the Magic Millions coming up you need to be thinking ahead and to ride another good one will give me a chance to measure him against the other two-year-olds in Sydney.”

But there is an urge for Berry to test McDonald for the Sydney premiership and he knows with a couple of good weeks in December he can be ahead of him by Christmas when the world’s best jockey returns from Hong Kong.

Berry is nine wins off McDonald but will get plenty of chances in the next three weeks.

“It burns inside me to win the premiership and being so close, I know, given I’m riding well, I can do it,” Berry said.

“The way things are going this season I feel I’m riding the best I have, and I just want to keep it going.”