The South African horseracing industry will again honour the memory at Turffontein on Saturday of those who perished in the Hennenman air disaster.
It is 37 years since the worst tragedy to hit South African horseracing devastated the lives of so many people involved.
Tuesday 12 April 1988 was a dark day for South African horseracing.
A United Airways charter flight crashed near the Free State town of Hennenman on its return from a racemeeting in Bloemfontein.
The meeting was due to have been held the previous week, with the racing party booked to travel on a scheduled South African Airways flight.
But when rain forced the postponement of the meeting, SAA couldn’t accommodate a booking change and a plane was specially chartered to transport jockeys and officials to Bloemfontein and back again.
The Hennenman Memorial at Turffontein Racecourse (Pic – Ashleigh Hughes)
Later, the logbook of the aged United Airways Dakota revealed that it had not been properly serviced and maintained. Fuel leaked and a fire started in the starboard engine, later spreading to the fuselage. The subsequent inquiry failed to pin blame for the disaster on anyone, with United Airways having gone into liquidation in the interim.
Many of the riders were under the age of 22 and the tragedy resulted in an enormous pool of talent lost to the industry overnight.
Twenty-four people died in the tragedy.
Jockeys: Keith Basel, Lawrence Riley, Johannes ‘Rooies’ Fourie, Warren Baillie, Bennie de Wet, Greg Holme, Douglas Roper, Danny Lombard, John McMurtry, Mark Nel, Michael Coetzee, Simon Rahilly and Gordon Sterley
Officials: Graham Kent, Dave Bullock, Henry Havergall, Ginger Masterton and Johannes van der Linden
Owners: Jacobus Viljoen and Neville Blignaut
Trainer: Hennie van Wyk
Air Crew: Jacob Kalt, Harold Whitehead and Jacqueline Henderson.
Gone, but not forgotten.
