HIS name is already one of the most recognisable in the North-East. It is emblazoned across a fleet of wagons that criss-cross the region on a daily basis, can be found on the skips and building machinery that form a key part of his burgeoning business empire and is the calling card for a family firm that has grown to employ 120 operatives and more than 20 full-time staff.

Step outside of the North-East, though, and John Wade has not been quite so prominent.

Until now. Over the course of the next six months, the 68-year-old is set to become a household name up and down the country, but his increased profile will have nothing to do with haulage.

As well as overseeing the continued success of his businesses, Wade also trains around 60 National Hunt horses at his base between Darlington and Sedgefield.

Most are novice or hunter chasers who tend to compete at local venues such as Sedgefield, Wetherby and Carlisle. A dozen-or-so, though, are newly arrived from the stables of Howard Johnson, who gave up his licence when he received a four-year ban from racing in August.

The addition of those horses has seen the profile of Wade's stable change.

No longer a northern outpost targeting low-class contests, this could be the season when his Mordon set-up begins to challenge some of National Hunt racing's big boys.

"It's certainly changed the type of face that's looking out at me from over the stable door," said Wade, whose highest-profile additions from Johnson are Door Boy, an eight-year-old chaser who once cost Graham Wylie £185,000, and Little Hercules, a youngster who has never been out of the first two in bumpers and novice hurdles.

"We've been going for almost three decades now, gradually building things up and trying to improve the standard of the horses in the yard, but this has been a pretty big shift in terms of the quality of horse we've been able to bring in.

"We've brought some lovely horses in, probably horses that we wouldn't have been able to touch in normal circumstances.

"I don't want to get into the rights and wrongs of what Howard was accused of doing, but he had horses that needed somewhere to go and we're going to do our best with them.

"I went out to see him after he handed in his licence, and he was so depressed about it all he gave me some horses for free just to fill my wagon up and see the back of them. I feel like we've got a duty to get the best out of them we can."

If anyone can extract the maximum potential from a mixed bag of promising juveniles and established campaigners, it is surely Wade, a horseman who has been making the most of his resources throughout a sporting career that began at an early age.

At 19, he began repairing and driving earth-moving plant and, two years later, he struck out on his own as an agricultural engineer. At the same time, he was taking part in local show-jumping events and hunting at the weekend.

He began riding in point-to-point races and, in 1982, celebrated his first success under rules courtesy of Glen Swilly, trained by Arthur Stephenson but owned and ridden by Wade.

A year later, he secured a trainer's licence in his own name, and the last 28 years have witnessed some notable triumphs.

"I've won Durham Nationals and Yorkshire Nationals, and last year I was third in the Scottish National," he said. "We've won at all the northern tracks and claimed a couple of really decent races at Doncaster.

"We don't like to stray too far, but the best days have probably come at Cheltenham. I had a horse called Chief Raider that won really well there, and Overflowing River won the four-mile hunters chase at two different Festivals. They were pretty special afternoons."

There were also a couple of fairly notable afternoons last season, as stable star Always Right won the Lloyd Vaderstad Chase at Kelso and Doncaster's respected Grimthorpe Chase.

He completed his campaign with a creditable third in the Scottish Grand National under the urgings of James Reveley, who will be Wade's jockey of choice this season when bookings allow.

"Always Right's a lovely horse to work with now, but it took an awful lot of time and patience to get him right," said assistant trainer Maria Myco. "When he first came over from Ireland, you wouldn't have given a tenner for him.

"He could hardly put one foot in front of the other without tripping over. He's still a bit like that when he walks round now. I remember him being favourite for a point-to-point as a youngster and people couldn't believe the price of him when they saw him walking.

"Stick him on a racetrack, though, and it's a different story. We had a girl worked with us who was an equestrian rider, and she did a lot of work to help sort out his action. See him approach a fence now, and you can see that it's worked."

If things go to plan, Always Right will be aimed at the spring festivals at Cheltenham and Aintree, but as ever, the majority of Wade's focus will fall on the tracks in the north.

"There's nothing better than going racing up here," he said. "As someone who's always been involved in agriculture and the country, it's great to see how important racing still is to rural life.

"I've always tried my best to support that, whether through sponsorship, which I'm lucky enough to be able to do with my business, or through running my horses at the northern tracks.

"We'll still be concentrating our efforts up here, but there's no doubt that the prize money situation, particularly in the north, is making it harder.

"There are days when we go racing and the prize money hardly even covers the training costs. And of course you only get that prize money if you're a winner.

"Something has to change if things are going to survive as they are. You could increase the prize money by 50 per cent and, in most cases, you'd still just be getting to a level that's financially viable.

"You don't come into racing to make money, but you need to get by. I'm lucky enough to be able to take a few hits, but if I think back to when I started out with a couple of horses here and there, there's no way I'd be able to do what I did then, now."

Prize money is a recurring grumble among northern trainers, but there is a new crisis to overcome this year following the recent changes to the whip regulations that have caused so much controversy on the flat.

Jump jockeys were only allowed to strike their mount eight times in a race, with a maximum of five strokes permitted after the final obstacle.

Updated rules were introduced yesterday, but before the announcement Wade said: "The whole thing needs sorting out. I can totally understand the jockeys' frustrations and they need to be listened to.

" If someone does something wrong in one of my businesses, I'm not allowed to take their money away. So why should jockeys lose their riding fee just because they've made a mistake?

"It's ridiculous to think a jockey can be counting how many times they've hit a horse. They've got so many instructions and they're trying to think of so many things that everything else goes out of the window.

"And to stop them hitting a horse in the run-in of a jumps race is ridiculous. Imagine a four-mile chase on heavy ground, with jockeys not allowed to use their whip to steer. You're going to have horses drifting all over the place and jockeys up for careless riding.

"What people seem to forget is that a horse, particularly a chaser, is a big, heavy animal. Once they set off on a particular path, they're just about impossible to turn around.

"Take away the whip, and the best way to steer them disappears."