David Thiselton
The South African racing fraternity woke up to the sad news yesterday that the legendary Hall Of Fame trainer Ormond Ferraris had passed away after a short illness.
He passed away peacefully at his retirement home in Plettenberg Bay yesterday morning, 10 June, surrounded by people he loved dearly, his sons David and Paul, grandson Luke, granddaughter Caroline and stepdaughters, Kim and Leigh.
Ormond was inducted into the South African Hall of Fame on Champions Day at Turffontein on Saturday, 29 March 2025, two days before his 93rd birthday.
He had saddled no fewer than ten Oaks winners, including Pretty Border, St Just and Lambarina.
He also prepared eight Derby winners, including the outstanding Distinctly, Newmarket Triple Crown winner Fine Regent, and The Monk, and he won the 2013 Triple Tiara with Cherry On The Top.
Another of Ferraris’ great legacies will be the role he played as a mentor. He played a pivotal role in shaping the careers of champion trainers David Ferraris, Mike de Kock, and Michael Clements, as well as leading trainers Weiho Marwing, Weichong Marwing and Sharon Kotzen.
Yet, what he held dearest was his founding of the Trainers Benevolent Fund, which he personally managed from 1970 to 2022 before handing it over to a private accountant.
Ferraris said about the fund just over a year ago, “The saddest thing I’ve seen in all my years in racing is the passing of many good horsemen without a penny to their names. We tried to help as many as we could, despite limited funding from racing authorities. Resources are now at a minimum, but we built a reserve that I hope will last a few more years.”
Ferraris briefly worked as a trainee antiques dealer in downtown Johannesburg before becoming workrider and then assistant trainer to George Weale in 1949 and 1950 respectively.
In 1954, he was granted his own trainer’s licence and saddled his first winner, Shenandoah, at Gosforth Park on 14 August of that year.
Ferraris went on to train approximately 2,600 more winners before retiring in May 2019, never handling a string of more than 60 runners.
Racing scribe Charl Pretorius ghost wrote Ormond’s autobiography “Thoroughly”.
The book reaffirmed Ferraris’ reputation as a dedicated trainer who put his horses first.
Ormond developed expertise in all facets of training and his most rewarding finds at the Sales ranged from a R200 purchase to the brilliant Australian-bred Tracy’s Element.
His dedication to his profession was in fact emphasised on the day he spotted Tracy’s Element.
It followed an exhausting flight to Australia, but rather than rest in the hotel and wait for the next day he went straight to the Sales grounds where he spotted the filly walking by soon after arriving there.
He was beside himself with excitement and upon returning to the hotel he informed owner Paddy Hinton that he had seen perfection. His expert eye and intuition proved to be a hundred percent correct. Tracy’s Element had 19 starts for 11 wins, four of them Gr 1s and three of those were against the boys, the Gold Medallion, the Computaform Sprint and the Star Sprint and she also won the SA Fillies Sprint.
The book confirmed Ormond to be a forthright man.
The first time a wealthy owner pushed him too far the twenty-seven year-old Ormond drove to the latter’s office, jumped over the receptionists desk and barged into his office.
“Get your horses out of my yard!”, or something to that effect, were the last words he said to a few owners, including that one.
However, this never stopped him progressing steadily and the reason for this was emphasised through another incident.
Ormond was warned by a colleague, after he had given one particular owner the “Get out!” command, he should perhaps have been more circumspect because this particular man had a reputation as one not to be messed with.
Ormond believed his end might be nigh when he came to a lonely bridge on the way to the track early in one of the ensuing mornings to find this man’s car blocking the path.
However, after approaching the car with trepidation, it turned out the owner was only there to beg Ormond to take his horses back.
Ormond was training at The Vaal at the time of that incident and had moved there after a stint at Newmarket.
His career in fact truly took off at the Vaal.
His reasons for the move, i.e. the training tracks had no clay underneath them and thus drained well, proved spot on.
Ormond had up and down relationships with jockeys, but developed flourishing partnerships with the good ones, with fierce loyalty being a determining factor.
The pressure was high on trainers in the old days when they did not get a percentage of the prize money and had to rely on betting. In fact this pressure was so great that in the mid 1960s Ormond packed up training and turned to sheep farming.
Luckily for SA racing, the latter stint did not last long!
There were then the boom years of the 1970s,1980s and first part of 1990, when massive crowds attended the races and the quality of the thoroughbreds competing was outstanding, as it had also been in the 1960s.
They horses were bred tougher in those days and this is emphasised when Ormond states matter-of-factly that his top class colt Distinctly made his debut over 800m on October 10 of his two-year-old season!
Of course Distinctly is at the centre of Ormond’s most disappointing day on a racecourse in the 1975 July, where he believes, but for interference from Gatecrasher, Distinctly would have won by four to five lengths.
Another aspect mentioned by Ormond is that throughout the dark days of apartheid peace and harmony existed between the various races of South Africa on the race course, even in the times when they were forced on to separate grandstands.
Former jockey and now Summerveld trainer Dennis Bosch summed up Ormond is one sentence yesterday morning.
He said, “In racing Mr Ferraris said it as it was, there was no beating around the bush, but out of racing he was the nicest, kindest man you could ever meet. He not only started the benevolent fund for trainers. but I believe he also built a beautiful church for the previously disadvantaged. He was a super guy and a great trainer.”
Ormond was still active into his 90s assisting trainer Weichong Marwing at Turffontein, where the pair once formed a lethal partnership with Ormond as trainer and Weichong as jockey.
