Gary Hanmer
Gary Hamner is a dual-purpose trainer based a Church Farm, a purpose-built facility on the Bolesworth Extate in Harthill, Tattenhall, Cheshire. Formerly an amateur jockey, assistant trainer and trainer of point-to-pointers and hunter chasers, with over 200 winners to his name, he first took out a full training licence in the summer of 2015. Hanmer actually saddled his first winner under Rules, Mountain Cabin, in a hunters’ chase at Bangor-on-Dee on May 15, 1993, but, for the first six seasons, his foray into the professional training ranks yielded single-figure tallies.
Neverthless, results took a turn for the better in 2021/22, when Hanmer enjoyed his most successful season, numerically, saddling 31 winners from 145 runners, at a strike rate of 21%, and amassed £222,128 in total prize money. However, in February 2022, he and conditional jockey William Shanahan fell foul of the stewards after an enquiry into the running and riding of Flaming Ambition in a novices’ hurdle at Doncaster. Having his first start for the yard, the five-year-old stayed on to finish fourth, beaten 13¾ lengths by the winner, Geometrical, but was deemed by the stewards to have been “ridden with a level of restraint”; Hanmer was fined £4,000 for “schooling and conditioning the horse on the racecourse” and Shanahan was supended for 18 days.
In happier times, on April 19, 2025, Hanmer celeberated his forthcoming tenth anniversary in the training ranks by winning the Middle Distance Veterans’ Series Final at Haydock. The £51,625 winning prize money contributed to a seasonal total of £271,435, his highest so far. In 2025/2026, so far, Hanmer has saddled five winners and 20 placed horses from 42 runners for a total of £82,306 in total prize money, which currently places him twenty-seventh in the National Hunt Trainers’ Championship. On the Flat, he has never saddled more than four winners in a single season, achieving that total just once, in 2023.
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