1932-2026: Hamba Kahle, Ormond Ferraris

Ormond Ferraris spent more than seven decades shaping South African horse racing, but his greatest legacy was the character behind the achievements. From humble beginnings in the Free State to the pinnacle of the sport, he built a reputation for integrity, wisdom, and an uncanny understanding of both horses and people. This moving tribute explores the remarkable life of a man who defied convention, nurtured generations of champions, and remained devoted to his principles until the very end. Rich with personal stories, humour, and insight, it captures the enduring impact of a true racing legend..By Alec Hogg.There is a particular kind of man who leaves a mark not through noise or self-promotion, but through the slow, steady accumulation of integrity over a lifetime. Ormond Ferraris was that kind of man. He was 94 years old when he died last week at his retirement home in Plettenberg Bay, surrounded by his sons David and Paul, his grandson Luke and granddaughter Caroline - the people he loved most. And yet the sport of racing — and those of us privileged to know him — feel the loss as something acute and irreplaceable.Ormond was born in 1932 in Wolwehoek, a tiny Free State settlement, the son of a Post Office technician and a schoolteacher. His grandfather, Bernardo Ferraris, had come to South Africa from northern Italy as a fifteen-year-old to seek his fortune in the diamond fields of Kimberley. Ormond inherited that same stubbornness of purpose. From the moment his family moved to Turffontein in 1939, and he smelt horse for the first time in the air of that suburb — as he so vividly described it in his autobiography — he never really wanted to be anywhere else.He couldn’t quite make it as a jockey — too tall, as his mentor George Weale gently told him. But the setback only redirected the ambition. He became, in 1950, what he believed was the first officially registered Assistant Trainer in South African racing history. By 1954 he had his own licence, and over the next 65 years he trained approximately 2,600 winners, won ten Oaks and eight Derbies, was twice National Champion Trainer, and in March last year — at 93 years of age — was inducted into the South African Racing Hall of Fame. He was still driving himself to the Turffontein stables at 4 am as recently as the end of 2024.The statistics, impressive as they are, tell only a fraction of the story. I want to tell you about the man I knew.Over the years, I spent many hours with Ormond over coffee and rusks between strings - and on road trips to breeding farms and studs across the Karoo and beyond — long drives through empty country where there was nothing to do but talk, argue, and listen. He was not a man who wasted words. When he spoke, it was worth hearing. He had an eye for a horse that bordered on the supernatural. He could walk into a sales ring and read an animal the way a poet reads a face — picking up things invisible to the rest of us, the structural truths beneath the surface. On those trips, as in the stables every morning, there was invariably a Jack Russell somewhere in the picture. He adored the breed — their stubbornness, their fearlessness, their absolute conviction that they belong wherever you happen to be. They were, in other words, not entirely unlike him. And they knew it. Every Jack Russell he ever owned considered him its personal property.But what I admired most was his principles. In an industry that has always had a complicated relationship with pharmaceutical shortcuts, Ormond stood apart. He was hugely, almost defiantly proud of the fact that he gave his horses what nature intended. He trained from the manger, as he put it. Feed them right, get them fit, place them correctly. He stayed far away from the stimulants so beloved by competitors. He believed the horse deserved better. And he was right..His judgment of human beings was every bit as sharp. I had a long-running argument with him about Markus Jooste, the Steinhoff CEO who was at the peak of his fame and influence in South African racing. Ormond was having none of it. He called him “Joostie”, dismissed him as “a rubbish”, and refused to have his colours in the yard. Eventually, after much nagging on my part, he relented — on condition I race the horse in partnership with him. When the animal arrived, Ormond sent the float straight back. The horse, he said, confirmed everything he believed about the man who sent it.In December 2017, the world discovered what Ormond had seen years earlier, when Jooste was unmasked as the architect of South Africa’s largest corporate fraud — a scandal that cost investors hundreds of billions of rand. He never once said, “I told you so”. He didn’t need to.His professional legacy is extraordinary. Mike de Kock. Michael Clements. Weiho and Weichong Marwing. Sharon Kotzen. His own sons, David and Paul. David, perhaps his greatest legacy — the son who became a multiple South African Champion, won the Durban July he was robbed of, and whom he encouraged to accept an invitation to successfully compete at the world’s very highest level in Hong Kong. Ormond shaped the modern landscape of South African training in ways that most people will never fully appreciate. And then there is the Trainers Benevolent Fund — which he started in the 1970s and personally ran for over fifty years — quietly paying for the funerals of famous trainers who died without a penny, supporting the widows of jockeys who had nobody else to turn to. He was prouder of that, I think, than of any race he ever won.Among the owners he treasured was the late Bridget Oppenheimer. They had a warm and genuine relationship, and he trained her Triple Tiara winner Cherry On The Top — a partnership that gave him particular pride. Away from the track, he valued the counsel of Larry Nestadt, the quietly influential South African business leader who gave generously of his time and wisdom. Ormond was always the first to know the limits of his own circle of competence, and Nestadt was someone he trusted to help him think beyond it.No account of the people Ormond loved would be complete without John Sibeko, his Induna, who worked alongside him for more than half a century. They spoke every single day. John understood horses the way Ormond did — through patience, observation and deep care — and the bond between them ran far deeper than any employment arrangement. It was a partnership, and a friendship, built over a lifetime in the same stables.I must speak too of his bond with Paul and Marcel Peter. Ormond gave generously of himself to those who were coming through — and Paul was among those he helped shape as a trainer, sharing his knowledge with the same seriousness he brought to everything. In his later years, before his retirement to Plettenberg Bay, it was Paul and Marcel who looked after him in Johannesburg with a warmth and loyalty that deeply moved him. He spoke of their kindness with real gratitude. That relationship — between the old master and a younger generation who honoured him — says something about who he was: a man who gave, and who inspired others to give back.And in his final years, he found a particular joy in following his grandson Luke’s career as a jockey in Hong Kong. He watched every race. He never missed one. That, too, was Ormond — fiercely loyal, fiercely loving, underneath all the gruffness..When I was asked to write the foreword to his autobiography — “Thoroughly: Seven Decades in the Sport of Kings and Crooks” — I opened the manuscript with some trepidation. Too many memoirs are not worth the paper they consume. But with Charl Pretorius’s skilled assistance, Ormond had produced something genuine: a long-closed window onto an extraordinary life, told without apology or embellishment. Because that was his way. He always told it as he saw it. Most often correctly.In the introduction he wrote for that book, he said: “I believe you’ll share a laugh and a tear reading about my adventures.” We did. We are sharing a few today.He was a strict man who became a kind one. A private man who, in the end, gave us a book. A hard man who wept over horses and, in his eighties, physically fought off a housebreaker. A stoic who absorbed without a word of complaint the pain of a son’s attempted assassination and the premature passing of the love of his life. And towards the end, an old man who drove himself to the stables at 4 am come rain or shine because that was what the horses needed, and the horses always came first.The Racing Hall of Fame called him “the perfect example of someone who has given his life to excellence, service, and uplifting others.” I cannot improve on that. I will only add: he was my friend. And I count that privilege among the great ones of my life.Hamba kahle, Ormond. Ride well..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. 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1932-2026: Hamba Kahle, Ormond Ferraris

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