Trainer Profile: Greg Ennion

Greg Ennion isn’t a statistics person. In fact, while admin and paperwork is an offshoot of the profession he has mastered, he much prefers to be outdoors. Among his horses, where he has a string of 40 thoroughbreds in Milnerton’s Koeberg Road stabling complex, or with a fishing rod in hand. 

Mind you, when it comes to a microphone, he always also seems to choose the right words, be it from a speaking or singing rock ’n roll perspective.

His day job is training, as it has been for 50 years, having swapped the indoors and suit and tie of a young twentysomething making a career in newspapers, to being with nature. “Although I originally came from Johannesburg, I moved to Cape Town as a 23-year-old and have never looked back. I used to ride in Hunt Club meetings in Joburg and Cape Town, so horses have always been part of my adult life,” he reminds us. 

What he doesn’t mention is that he was so dominant in Cape Hunt that fellow riders signed a petition to have him deemed ineligible because he was “too professional”.

That was then, this is now.

Ennion is now in his mid-70s and enjoying one of his strongest starts to a season in years. As we approached mid-December he had saddled 10 winners at a strike rate of nearly 12 percent. That compares favourably with his recent season winners’ returns of 18, 16, 7, 12 and 7.

However, the ever-jovial septuagenarian maintains that he “didn’t know” that he had reached double figures for this 2024/25 campaign. “I honestly don’t have any idea of how many winners I’ve had in my career, I couldn’t even give you a ballpark. My whole approach is not to count how many winners I have, it’s to do my best every single day. That relates to the horses, all my owners and stable staff. I don’t like statistics.”

What he does like though is the uptick of interest in his stable, and recognition of the job he continues to do on the Cape Racing trainers’ block. 

Ennion knows better than most that there are no shortcuts to success, and in racing form and favour can be fleeting. “Overall, I think that from being considered a ‘poor’ stable I’ve achieved some good results. Horses like Veronique, Fly To Rio and Wordsworth all cost me between R10k and R20k and they’ve all won up to R500k through their consistency.

“Two-and-a-half years ago I was down to 12 horses in my stable. Now I have 40, and 25 of those are two-year-olds. It wasn’t too long ago that I took my wife out for lunch and the conversation was to the point. ‘Cards on the table. We’ve either got to make a huge effort to rebuild the stable, or we pack it in and retire’. We both agreed that it was too soon to retire and we love life too much.

“I, and my staff, have spent a lot of time on promoting the stable and we have also got our own syndicate, thanks to Cape Racing’s syndicate initiative.”

Ennion confirmed that his yard’s syndicate name had come from two of his patrons, Marsh Shirtliff and (the late) Anton van Molendorff, who paid regular midweek visits to his yard and branded his weekend punts as “Genuine Ennion” doubles. 

“New faces have come into the game and that’s healthy for the sport, so well done to Cape Racing on their syndication initiatives. I like to keep my syndicates quite intimate in that I would prefer to have 10 owners in a horse than more than that, and it’s really breathed new life into the industry.

“It has also helped that some ‘big names’ have come into the yard. When would-be owners see someone like the great Gary Player race a horse with Greg Ennion – and win a couple of races! – they will sit up and take notice. ‘This guy can’t be that bad if Gary Player is in the yard,’ they will think, and then express interest in also getting involved.”

So, these are very much progressive times in the stable. From the number of owners, increase in horses – although down on the days when he had 65, many of which were owned by Braam van Huyssteen – and the winners reaching double figures well before half the season is up.

Ennion is renowned for his shrewd eye at the sales and penchant for a “cheapie” – “It’s the way I have always been and that’s not going to change, although R300,000 is now considered cheap!”.

Interestingly, his smart business sense saw him purchase the five-year-old Symbolize from Mike Bass for R3,000 in the mid-1980s. “As a five-time winner he earned a ticket for the 1986 J&M Met. There he finished three lengths behind the winner Wild West and had run eight wide on the turn! The jockey got off and said we should be in the first box.

“He won nine features for me. After that Met I ran him in the Administrators Trophy at Milnerton. The bookmakers had priced him up at 20-1. I started putting R100 on him, R2000-R100. Every time I put a hundred on him the bookies would say, do you want some more, want a stretch? So I found another 100 and started taking R2500-R100. I must have won R75,000 on him!”

Given his several lifetimes rolled into one glorious ride,  I ask that if he were writing an autobiography, what would he call it. There’s a brief pause for thought. “Play It Again, Sam”. No regrets.

Yet, as much as things change in racing, some stay the same. He laments the lack of stayers’ races on the programme and the lack of stallions to produce stayers.

“We used to be able to blame the authorities for not putting on enough stayers’ races. Now, the breeders have got all these speed horses. The last big stallion to produce stayers was Silvano, while I thought a lot of Louis The King. It’s actually quite ridiculous.”

When Ennion speaks, one has to sit up and listen. He repeats his respected view that Hollywoodbets Durbanville – as a racetrack, not as an impressively revamped venue – “can’t be fixed”, given it’s built on a clay base. “Cape Racing did an admirable job in addressing the draining around the turn in particular where there were bad patches between the 700m and 800m mark. But, unfortunately, it’s mother nature. As much as you top-dress the track, it will always be soft in winter and rock-hard in summer, because of the clay base.”

And he also aims a dart at the handicappers. “They must be sick of me knocking on their door! The latest example was Love Is A Rose. She’s a five-year-old who was given a 101 merit rating racing against fillies and doesn’t receive a sex allowance against the colts. She has just run second to Holding Thumbs in the Listed Cape Summer Stayers Handicap.”

However, anyone who has been around in racing knows that the above debates are the very lifeblood of racing. Without discussion and opinion the sport wouldn’t exist. Conversation is healthy and even more so when they come from a person who has half a century in the game and is still operating at the sharpest end of the profession. Not many people can compete with that.