Greg Cheyne

Greg Cheyne is one of South Africa’s most personable riders whose old school work-ethics and rock-solid reliability have earned him a place at the top of the riding ranks. “People laugh when they see me run from one ring to the next in the mornings. It’s not because I’m trying to keep fit or lose weight – in my day you HAD to!” he laughs. “That’s just how we were taught as apprentices.” Mild-mannered and pleasant, he is respected by his peers and his services are sought after by leading trainers across the country.

Greg graduated from the SA Jockey Academy alongside such contemporaries as Alec Forbes, Marcus Samuel and Paul Devlin. Twenty years in the saddle has seen him collect a string of 11 Gr1 wins including the 2008 Gold Cup on Desert Links, the 2009 Vodacom Durban July on Big City Life and the 2015 Mercury Sprint on Captain Of All. Outside of South Africa, he has ridden in Zimbabwe, Mauritius, Germany, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Macau, winning the Gr1 Malaysia Sprint and the Malaysian International Jockeys Challenge. He is also a proud ambassador for Avontuur Estate and retained rider for Ridgemont Stud.

Injury

However, Greg has been on the injury bench since 27 December 2015, after an incident in the starting stalls left him with a severely damaged right foot. At a little after 1pm that Sunday afternoon, Cheyne rode Glen Kotzen charge Mount Keith into the starting stalls for the day’s card opener, an 800m juvenile scurry.

Greg remembers that they loaded midfield and that the Zimbabwean colt became fractious, resulting in Greg’s foot becoming trapped in an awkward position. “The horse became even more fractious and I still couldn’t move my foot. Then he played up properly. There was no doubt in my mind that my foot had been damaged – I felt it breaking and looking down I could see the sole of my boot and thought ‘this isn’t good’. I managed to lift myself off the horse by pulling up on the bars of the starting gates before he broke through the stalls and bolted up the track. The handlers helped me onto the floor and out to the paramedic van. The initial pain was excruciating, but I think I went into shock and luckily there was very little pain until I got to hospital. But when we got there I told them ‘Give me whatever you’ve got!’”

Diagnosis

Cheyne was admitted to Vincent Pallotti hospital in Cape Town and initial x-rays indicated multiple fractures. He posted a Facebook message the following day thanking everyone for their well wishes and adding the following update, “At this point I am waiting to go for CT scans as they say “it’s complicated”… Not quite what I needed to hear. My foot is broken in 3 places according to the X-rays but Dr says CT will show us the full extent. Surgery will follow once swelling subsides. Possibly Wednesday/Thursday.”

CT scans revealed 7 fractures, including two badly crushed bones, plus a dislocation to the midsection of the foot (tarsal bones or Lisfranc joint).

“It’s known as a Lisfranc injury,” Greg explains. “My sister is a radiographer and when I showed her the CT scans she asked ‘How did they manage to fix that?’”

“It took 12 days for the swelling to come down enough for them to operate and they had to drill bone out of my heel to perform a bone fusion. They pinned the second toe and then fused the first three metatarsals to the cuneiform bones. The pin is out, but I’ve got 4 plates and 14 screws, 20 if you count the 6 in my hand,” he smiles ruefully.

“Everything has gone according to plan for the first 3 months, the boot came off in early April and now it’s on to rehab. Because of the fusion of some of the joints, I will lose a bit of mobility in my foot, but they’re expecting a full recovery and so far everything is going as we hoped. I’m hopeful to be riding again by the end of June / early July and have tentatively set my goal as the start of the new season. I’m hoping it might be earlier, but I should be up and running by then.”

Unscheduled opportunity

Employing his trademark positive outlook on life, Greg decided to use the unscheduled break as an opportunity for a holiday. “Jockeys are self-employed, so any time off means time that we’re not earning. That’s why we generally don’t take a lot of holidays. Fortunately I was quite well covered by insurance, so I opted to take advantage and my mom and I flew to Australia for 2 weeks to visit my sister.”

He started in Brisbane and spent some time in Noosa and the Gold Coast catching up with Jeff and Nicola Lloyd and a few other South African faces. “Jeff and Nicola are doing very well. I also saw Peter Muscatt, Allon Gurr and Dewalt Mardon who I used to ride with at Glen Kotzen’s. Robbie Fradd is also out there, and it was great to catch up with him at dinner with the Lloyds.”

Bloodstock interest

Then it was off to Sydney for the Inglis Yearling Sales. While Greg’s achievements from the saddle are reasonably well documented, it is somewhat less well known that he also owns horses and posted what is possibly a first for the South African record books, when he rode Emblem of Liberty, a filly he and his wife Claire part-owned with Lionel Cohen, to a Gr1 victory in the 2009 Paddock Stakes.

He was full of praise for the quality of the Australian sale. “It’s a little scary. You look at a horse and think that’s really nice. Then you look at the next one and that’s also really nice. And then you realise they’re nearly all like that. The quality of horse on offer is exceptional and they’re all top pedigrees like Redoute’s Choice, Fastnet Rock, etc. The sales prep is fantastic and the horses all look ready to race.” One of the yearlings turned out to be an old friend: “I was looking through the catalogue and saw a great granddaughter of Our Casey’s Girl, who was the very first horse I ever rode in a race, but I’m giving my age away now,” he quips. “While I was walking around, I spotted a horse I really liked and it turned out to be her!”

The filly in question was lot 237, a Frankel filly out of Gr1 winning Chocolicious, who was knocked down to Shadwell Stud’s agent Angus Gold for $610,000 and will now be sent to South Africa to be trained by Mike de Kock.

Thinking ahead

Greg has a keen interest in bloodstock and is not afraid to put his money where his mouth is.

“I’ve picked a few myself. I went to buy a horse at last year’s CTS March Yearling Sale and because the one I wanted came in under budget, I saw a Querari I quite liked as a pinhook and managed to get it for R50k. I would have loved to keep the horse, but I had to sell and I ended up getting R130k at the CTS November Ready To Run. It sounds like a decent profit, but in fact I made about R200 on the project, so I broke square,” he grins. “It was an interesting experience though and I learnt a lot.”

He’s also got a very nice 2yo Pathfork filly in the pipeline, which has been brought along slowly by his wife Claire. “She’s a nice filly, but is still very immature physically. Claire will continue working with her until she feels she’s ready for training. She is very confident and on a recent outing to the beach, she led all the fancy Warmbloods out,” he says proudly.

Sales recce

He spent the past week honing his eye at the National Sales. “It was an educational trip, but it was an interesting exercise. I did lots of viewings, made my notes and it was interesting to see how the horses sold. I was particularly pleased that a full brother to my Pathfork filly went for R700k, which gave me a lot of confidence.”

Is bloodstock work something he is considering long-term? “The injury has given me a lot of time to think.

I love what I do, but time is not on my side and I’ve got to think ahead,” he says frankly.

“I’ve started a small business importing jockey kit from Australia and America. A jockey’s kit is the tools of your trade and you cannot afford to compromise in terms of quality and safety. I’m only bringing in a handful of items at the moment, but it’s going well. As far as the bloodstock work goes, I’d love an opportunity to shadow someone like Jehan Malherbe and John Freeman. Obviously it’s a skill that takes years to develop, but if I started now, then at least I’ll have some experience by the time I stop riding.” Interestingly, another area he’s interested in is TV work. Studying form is part and parcel of being a jockey and Greg says although he doesn’t enjoy addressing a live crowd, he is very comfortable in front of a camera.

One thing is certain, whatever he chooses is sure to be a success – although hopefully that’s still a few years away for now.