A doyen of the training ranks in South Africa, Jean Heming has passed on in the UK, her residence since she moved from South Africa.

The lady trainer was known for a plethora of Grade 1 winners and top class horses including the likes of Roland's Song and Pedometer.

Mrs Heming had been unwell but he legacy on the South African turf runs rich and deep evoking memories of the days when she was of the Queen of the turf in Gauteng, then Transvaal.

Jean Jaffee in her coffee table book, They Raced To Win, said the following about Heming..

Another trainer at the Vaal is Mrs D.J. (Jean) Barnard [Heming] who trained her first winner during the 1970/71 season and only nine years later headed the list of trainers in the Transvaal.

No-one seeing the immaculately groomed Jean Barnard on the course would imagine that she is up each morning at the crack of dawn and if needs be mucks out a stable or grooms her horses. Mrs Barnards achievement is almost a fairy story. By the 1977/78 season she was already the fourth leading trainer in the country with 73 winners. The following year she was third with 70 wins, 155 places and R312,240 in net stakes, the second highest amount earned by any stable in the country.
Mrs Barnard and her husband arrived in South Africa from England with two yearlings, a Welsh pony colt and an Arab colt, in September 1969. For a year they farmed in Villiers in the Orange Free State and then came up to the Transvaal. Mrs Barnard taught riding at the Kildare Riding School at Honeydew and also competed in the show ring. She won the Elementary Dressage at the Epol Indoor Horse Show, one of the top shows in the country. In 1970 she decided that it was too difficult to make a living out of show horses and took herself to the 1970 Yearling Sales where she bought two fillies and then applied for a trainers licence. Her licence took quite some time to come through however and in the interim her husband sold the fillies. She was given a horse, Lambeth Walk, a 5-year-old maiden, but it broke down the second time out!

Mrs Barnards first winner - in 1971 - was a leased horse called Sportsclub, a 5-year-old which won at the Vaal by a short head. The next year the struggle continued with only five wins, but from then on she went from strength to strength and now has 60 horses in her yard. So far Mrs Barnard has not managed to capture any of the big plums but has had some fair horses amongst them, Ballet Kick, winner of the 1973 St Leger and the 1975 Jubilee Handicap and Victors Song, winner of the 1978 UTA Handicap. She has won two Goldfields with Abeam nd Galleon, the latter also the winner of the Transvaal Handicap and the Transvaal Cesarewitch. One of her best performers had been Sir Mordaunt Milners Off The Hook who in 1976 won the Winter Stayers Handicap, the Transvaal Cesarewitch, ran second in the Durban Gold Cup and then won the 1977 Transvaal Handicap.

Amongst Mrs Barnards patrons is the master golfer Gary Player, whose record achievements on the golf course have already thrilled two generations.