Dean Ivory — from mechanic and welder to enthusiastic and successful trainer

Trainers used to come into racing with Aunt Agatha’s legacy after a short service commission, having probably worn a trilby in their playpens. These days some come by different routes. To describe Dean Ivory as a small trainer, as the media do, is technically accurate but missing the point. Drive along a lane in leafy Hertfordshire, past care homes, stockbroker villas and driving ranges, and you come across an imposing set of electronically operated gates next door to a bustling premises embracing self-drive hire, recycling and road haulage. The commercial yard, run with brother Christopher Ivory, is a thriving business. Behind the posh gates next door and down an avenue lined with massive, expensive-to-trim yew hedges is the fun part, the Harper Lodge Farm training establishment run by second-generation trainer Dean Ivory.

Dean is as big or small a trainer as he chooses to be. His father, Ken Ivory, who trained from the same 100 acres of leafy Hertfordshire, also farmed and ran a haulage company. Dean, whose love of horses was imparted by a grandfather who ran horses and carts and kept brood mares, went to agricultural college but also worked on the skips as a mechanic and welder. Enjoying a few weeks in Australia on his grandfather’s legacy, he was woken one morning by grab lorries emptying a weekend’s supply of bottles and tinnies. He came home, bought a couple of grab lorries ‘and before I knew where I was I had 50 to 60 trucks’. He was, and is, a grafter, who likes to make it all sound like luck, but his business life since, which included a period running a pet cemetery in St Albans, has largely been about creating more time for his true love: putting a smile on owners’ faces.