Given the length of his riding career and his reputation for making extraordinary comebacks, it might pay for his fellow riders to ensure the jockeys' room door is firmly shut behind Jeff Lloyd when he leaves for the final time at Doomben on Saturday.
He hangs up the saddle at age 57 after a 43-year career which has seen him ride over 5500 winners across 10 countries. He goes out firmly at the top of his game, claiming a fourth consecutive Brisbane jockeys' premiership and his 18th jockeys' title overall.
Australian racing has been the stage of some storied riding careers, and while there have been those who have won more Group 1 races and plenty who have been prettier in the saddle, few could boast the longevity and toughness of Lloyd, who famously came back from a stroke to continue riding five years' ago.
Jeff Lloyd
It's easy in hindsight to see that stroke as just another career hurdle, but the seriousness of the incident in March 2013 was enough for the man himself to contemplate not just the end of his career, but the end of his life.
“It’s always with me. I know it’s not normal,” he told the Courier Mail last year. “When I see the X-rays and the way everything is working inside my head, it’s not normal."
“The doctor said ‘somehow the blood is getting to your brain’ and that is fortunate and shouldn’t be a problem. But whenever I have bad headaches I panic because I think maybe something is happening up there."
"Whenever I have bad headaches I panic because I think maybe something is happening up there." - Jeff Lloyd
He has embraced his second chance and ridden in the form of his career since. On Wednesday, his second-to-last metropolitan meeting, he marked his 400th Brisbane winner since returning to the saddle in 2014.
Family has been the guiding principle for Lloyd after the past few years and it will be the reason he stops riding after Saturday.
The name J Lloyd will not be long lost to the racebooks and formguides of Australia, with his son Jaden currently with Lindsay Park in Victoria and ready to embark on his own riding career, while another son Zac is also nearing his time.
Lloyd intends to stay close with his boys, and the family may follow their careers.
"We want to be close. If they both end up in Melbourne, that'd be great. If they divide where they are, we’ll have to sort that out, but we will relocate once they both get going in their careers," he told RSN this week.
Jeff was set to call time on his career at the end of 2018, with Jaden enrolled at the South African Jockeys Academy, the same place his father learned his craft 44 years ago. But a broken wrist saw Lloyd Jnr return, and Lloyd Snr push out his retirement date by six months.
Never one to court publicity, he was happy to go out on a quiet note. But the local trainers have embraced the opportunity to send him off a winner. He has seven rides on Saturday, two of them for the trainer he has had most success with in Toby Edmonds.
Edmonds and Lloyd have an amazing record of 172 winners from 654 rides at a strike rate of 26 percent. At 4:30pm on Saturday, Edmonds will leg him aboard his last ever ride aboard Granny Red Shoes (Not A Single Doubt) a filly he has ridden three times before for two wins and a second.
Toby Edmonds and Jeff Lloyd have a winning strike rate of 26 percent
From humble beginnings
Born in the UK, Lloyd moved to South Africa when he was 11. He had never ridden a horse when he heard the running of the 1973 Durban July on the radio and suggested to his father he might want to be a jockey. Three years later, having enrolled in the Academy, he has had his first race ride at Greyville.
After waiting eight months for his first winner, Lloyd became champion apprentice of South Africa three times. He would go on to win the South African senior premiership six times riding nearly 100 Group 1 winners.
"Probably my highlight was riding three Group 1 winners in one day. It was the J & B Met in Cape Town, which is a big day and I won all three Group 1s. That day sticks in my mind," he said
"Probably my highlight was riding three Group 1 winners in one day." - Jeff Lloyd
That was in 2007 and was his fifth winner in the Met. His first winner in the famous race was aboard Wolf Power (SAF) (Flirting Around {USA}) and he still rates that horse as the best he has ridden.
"I won eight Group 1s on him. He was a very good miler. I probably didn’t appreciate him then as he was very early in my career. I thought it was normal to get on a good horse like him. But I've come to realise he was very special," he said.
Among his rivals in the jockey ranks back then was Michael Roberts, who would become the champion Jockey in Great Britain and who Lloyd describes as this toughest competitor.
"He was about nine years older than me and when I was coming through, he was 11-time champion South African jockey and he was my idol," he said.
Taking his skills abroad
Like his idol, Lloyd travelled to ride around the world, winning five jockeys' titles in Mauritius before arriving in Sydney in November 2007.
To move his wife and three kids across the other side of the world in his late 40s was clearly a big decision for Lloyd.
“I don't think it is easy for any jockey to come over to a new country and establish themselves. I believe SA jockeys have proved they are world class riders, but it is all about hard work, selling your product and determination,” Lloyd told journalists at the time.
"It is all about hard work, selling your product and determination." - Jeff Lloyd
It proved a great success and less than six months later he won one of Australia's biggest races, the G1 AJC Derby on Nom Du Jeu (NZ) (Montjeu {Ire}).
Watch: Jeff Lloyd winning the G1 AJC Derby aboard Nom Du Jeu
Less than 12 months down the track, he was riding in Hong Kong, again making a mark on the world stage and winning the 2011 Hong Kong Champions Mile on then 9-year-old Able One (NZ) (Cape Cross {Ire}).
He then moved the family - wife Nicola, daughter Tayah and sons Jaden and Zac - to Queensland in 2012, claiming a second Australia Group 1 winner in the Tatts Tiara on Pear Tart (Dehere {USA}).
But in early 2013, at 51, he suffered the stroke and he made peace with the fact that his time in the saddle was over.
The comeback
But that burning desire to win never left him, and it was no surprise to those close to him that he was back riding within 12 months.
"I wouldn't have come back unless I thought I was good enough to ride well again, but you still have to do it. I feel like I rode better from the break than I did before I went off," he said.
"It was a challenge, but I felt I was up to it."
"I wouldn't have come back unless I thought I was good enough to ride well again." - Jeff Lloyd
In his 'second career' he has ridden 26 stakes winners and in 2016/17 set a new mark for metro winners in a season in Queensland, with 137. That also made him the leading metropolitan rider in the country. During that season, he also rode seven winners at the one meeting at the Sunshine Coast, the fourth time he had achieved that feat in his career.
Deciding when to retire was always going to be difficult and as mentioned, there have been a couple of false starts. He always thought it would be one dictated by his physical wellbeing, but as it turns out that wasn't a factor.
Lloyd has been renowned for his cool demeanour in the saddle
"I obviously knew everything comes to an end. I always said my body will tell me when it’s enough, But actually my body is in pretty good shape," he said.
"My mind is more concerned about the two boys riding and I always said, if possible, I'd like to go out riding well I don’t want to push it too far and I'm happy with the way things have gone."
Lloyd has been renowned for his ice-cool demeanour in the saddle, which is what will make this Saturday so unusual for him.
"I'm really wondering how I'm going to take it all really, how I am going to take it all on the day, I've got 80 friends coming for the day, so it’s going to be emotional I think," he said.
Whatever transpires, he will be remembered as one of the toughest and most prolific jockeys the racing world has seen over the past 50 years.
