When you think of the profile of an athlete at the top of their game, the usual characteristics that come to mind focus on youth and perfect health. Jeff Lloyd certainly bucks that trend.
Lloyd has 14 jockeys' premierships to his name, including his first Brisbane and Queensland premierships last season, and he recently broke the record for Brisbane metropolitan wins within a single season. He's now notched 124 winners for the 2016/2017 Brisbane metropolitan racing season -- more than double the number of winning rides of his nearest rival and fellow veteran Jim Byrne -- with a winning strike rate of 21 percent. He is, then, a racing phenomenon despite having not enjoyed a blemish-free health record over the past few years. Oh, he's also 55-years-old.
Lloyd says he doesn't know when asked how he is achieving such great feats at this stage of his career.
"Probably halfway through last year, everything fell into place," he tells ESPN. "I just felt comfortable in my riding and I probably rode better in the second half of the year. I was third on the premiership, not winning. I was wanting to win it [the premiership] but I didn't want it to be close. If I lost, I wanted it to be by 20 wins or something like that. I said to my wife, if I was 20 ahead with one month to go then I won't have to worry. The pressure was on us last season, and to be 62 ahead with two months to go -- I never ever thought it would be like that."
Lloyd, born in England, stamped his talent almost immediately after he moved to South Africa, aged 11, when his father migrated to chase a better job: he won three championships as a teenage apprentice before claiming six title as a professional - and five more in Mauritius. For all that success on a competitive racing circuit, his biggest challenge came in March 2013 - after moving to Australia five years previously. When riding at a Sunshine Coast racemeeting, Lloyd was stood down by stewards after he reported feeling ill. The gravity of his illness wasn't realised until two days later, when doctors found he had suffered an ischaemic stroke. That's no ordinary stroke, as Jeff's wife, Nicola, told the Gold Coast Bulletin in 2016:
"So many people think he must have just had a mini-stroke because he wasn't affected badly but I sat in the neurologist's office with him and he put his brain on a big screen in front of us and about a third of Jeff's brain is dead," she said.
Lloyd considers his life circumstances and agrees with former jockey Maurice Logue's reflection that the biggest impact from racing injuries is felt more on the families than on the jockeys themselves.
"You know your own body and how you feel," Lloyd says. "If my wife had a stroke, I'd be very worried about her -- very worried -- if she had to be a jockey and go back and ride at that age. I would've thought she was mad. It was definitely more concerning for my wife more than me. I knew how I felt and I am sensible enough to get on a horse and know if it is 'all there' or not. You can get and say that you feel fine, but there is still the pressure of riding in a race, riding competitively, and then it is whether you make it or not."
Given that pressure of race riding, Queensland racing expert and RadioTAB presenter Steve Hewlett tells ESPN "it's remarkable" that Lloyd has come back from a stroke and back issues to break records.
"His pushing riding style is quite unique, but incredibly effective."
And that effectiveness is the astonishing thing. Four years after such a major health event, Lloyd still rides as well -- and indeed better -- than so many others. For many others, the reality of such achievements would be hard to believe; but not for the man himself.
"For an outsider, I guess it is hard to believe", Lloyd tells ESPN. "But me knowing myself as a person, not it's not. It's not hard to believe because I wouldn't have come back to riding unless I felt that I couldn't have done it. I've often said that I felt that I had a something to prove in Australia. Once I had the opportunity to come back, I thought it would be possible but still had to do it."
Lloyd's career in racing, and the successes to come, had not registered on the family's radar before they moved to South Africa.
"I didn't have much as a kid; we didn't have much as a family. It was a hard upbringing but I just loved watching horse racing on TV in England. So it was something that I got attracted to, but I had no idea what it involved. No one in my upbringing was involved in racing. I went to the academy [in South Africa] just because I told my parents that I wanted to be a jockey. When we migrated to South Africa, they got me into the academy there. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to ride or what it meant to be a jockey, but it just caught my attention as a kid.
Lloyd subsequently moved to Australia, in concert with brother-in-law and Sydney-based Group 1-winning jockey Glyn Schofield.
"We both married sisters," Lloyd says. "We thought 'we've got to get out of [South Africa]'. We both had confidence in our ability to make a life and a living to support our family. We probably didn't realise how tough Australian racing is, though, and how hard it would be to achieve what we have. Even if I didn't ride a winner here, I didn't come here for racing. We came here to give our children a better life. We've given them that and they'll benefit from our emigration. Having done well and achieved here in racing is a bonus."
As Queensland's biggest day of racing approaches, at Doomben on Saturday, Lloyd, the top-ranking jockey in the state, strangely doesn't have mount in two of the three Group 1 features: the Stradbroke Handicap (1350m) and the Queensland Derby (2200m). He will, however, be aboard Magnufighter in the Group 1 J.J. Atkins Stakes (1600m) for two-year-olds. UBET rate Magnufighter a 25-1 chance, and they list his Group 2 Queensland Guineas ride Sylpheed at $7.50.
"I like him," Lloyd says of the Gary Duncan-trained Mangufighter. "He's still very young and he's going to be better as a three-year-old. He's probably not precocious enough to threaten the two-year-olds over the shorter trips, but he does have a chance of doing it over a mile."
Could Sylpheed, then, be his best chance of the day?
"It was until the draw came out. Drawn [barrier] 19, she's tough and tries very hard. She is racing very well but the draw is a setback."
Whatever the results on Saturday, Jeff Lloyd is a winner.
"Being a sportsman is a funny thing. When everything works it really works, I suppose. Anyway, I'll take it."
What then for the future?
"There'll come a time when I'll say that I got the best out of me and I don't think I can do any better. Then I'll stop. But I don't know when that will be."