Controversial and colourful trainer Jean Heming dies at 78

One of South Africa's leading trainers Jean Heming has died in Dornoch, Scotland at the age of 78.

A controversial character, she was the country's champion trainer four times and a 12-time champion in the Transvaal.

Heming was married twice, warned off twice, kept a lion as a pet and was the victim of a mysterious shooting at her stables which left her in a wheelchair.

Born in Malmesbury in Wiltshire, she rode in point-to-points before marrying South African air force officer Philip Barnard and emigrating.

Having started training in 1971, Heming met with immediate success and her numbers expanded rapidly. She became South Africa’s champion trainer for the first time in the 1979-80 season and repeated the feat the following year.

By the time she did it a third time in 1986-87, she was Mrs Mike Heming, having divorced the outspoken Barnard and remarried. She was champion for the fourth and final time in 1989-90.

She said the best horse she trained was the mare Roland's Song, a daughter of the 1978 2,000 Guineas winner Roland Gardens, who won the Summer Cup twice and the Champion Stakes three times.

Heming’s other big-race wins included the South African Derby with Kwiktan 1983 and the Sun International with Pedometer – both won by huge margins.

She was charged for using illegal substances three times and was twice warned off, but she took the Jockey Club to the Supreme Court and was cleared of all charges.

Heming told South African racing journalist Charl Pretorius: “There are trainers who have used arsenic, aconite, EPO and minute doses of tranquillisers, but no horse in my yard was ever doped to win. The only pre-race preparation administered was drenching to hydrate a dehydrated horse.”

It was four days before Christmas in 1993 when a mysterious gunman appeared at her stables at the Vaal and shot her four times, with the bullets penetrating her chest, shoulder and stomach.

No motive for the shooting was ever established. She had the week’s wages on her person but the money was not taken. Five people were arrested yet none of them appeared at the courthouse on the date of the trial – the police said the case files were lost.

She never recovered her full health and returned to Britain in 1999, living in Tetbury, Gloucestershire for several years before moving to Scotland.

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