Zac Lloyd And The Normalcy Of Great Expectations
Sydney racing’s exciting young talent is a fourth generation jockey whose international upbringing within the sport’s core means that his career so far is him doing what he always thought he’d do.
Zac Lloyd And The Normalcy Of Great Expectations
Sydney racing’s exciting young talent is a fourth generation jockey whose international upbringing within the sport’s core means that his career so far is him doing what he always thought he’d do.
2 August, 2026ZAC LLOYD has always known his life’s work would be in the saddle – whip and reins in hands, goggles pulled down, toes balancing in irons, travelling at speed on the backs of thoroughbreds. It wasn’t just a childhood dream, it was an expectation. Any other life path was inconceivable to him.
That’s not entirely surprising when you consider his father, grandfather and great-grandfather were top jockeys. But horse racing is not just in Lloyd’s blood, it seems like it’s wrapped into the impalpable fibres of his soul.
Just ask his dad, Jeff Lloyd. British born, South African-raised and moulded, Jeff had a successful career in South Africa, Mauritius, Hong Kong and Australia.
He remembers taking South African-born Zac, the youngest of his and wife Nicola’s three children, with him to Mauritius during his riding stints there. Zac was two years old the first time and within a couple of years, the youngster was handing out back-handed advice to his old man.
“I rode in Mauritius for four years so he was about five or six when we left,” Lloyd senior recalls. “I came home there one day, he’d been watching me race, and he said to me, ‘Why didn’t you change your whip on that horse?’
“And he was correct. He already knew at that age that if the horse goes to the left, why haven’t you changed your whip to the left? You know, he’d ask questions like that at the age of five.
“He was funny, he’s always been fully zoned-in and always asking questions from as far as I can remember, like going through races and asking me questions. So, I just knew right from the beginning that he’s got the passion anyway, whether he had the ability at that time, I wouldn’t have known, but I knew he had the passion.”
Turns out the ability was there, too. Lloyd, at 22, is showing that he’s one of the brightest emerging talents on the planet.
“It never once came into my consciousness that this isn’t what I’m going to do and I’m not going to be good at it,” Lloyd says with a direct matter-of-factness that he checks with a sidenote of healthy self-awareness.
“I know it’s weird to say that, but it’s just the way it’s been, I mean, if you can see it, it’s half the battle and then obviously working hard for it when you get the opportunity. But, yeah, it’s just always been my life, pretty much.”
Lloyd has been the teenage star apprentice; he’s already had a gig riding as a retained jockey for Godolphin in Australia where he’s lived since the family moved on from a spell in Hong Kong back in 2012; this year alone, he’s won one of Australia’s most coveted races, the G1 Golden Slipper, and nailed a high-profile win in the Britannia Handicap at Royal Ascot, which showed the Europeans what he can do.
He’s ridden in the land of his birth recently, too. And you can bet your life the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s licensing committee knows his every move, and now we know for sure he’s also caught the eyes of the folks at the Japan Racing Association (JRA).
Lloyd has been invited to ride at the JRA’s World All Star Jockeys contest at Sapporo in late August.
“That’s going to be very exciting, it’s a great privilege to get the invitation,” he says and reveals with a smile that Jeff and Nicola “are probably five times more excited” about it.
“I was very excited, but my mum, I don’t know why, she loves Japanese racing, and she’s always telling me to push myself and try to get over to Japan for three months or so.
“I think I’ve only been to Tokyo, not to the northern part of Japan so it’s really going to be exciting. You see the crowds they get, and Japanese racing, it’s unbelievable with the massive fans of the sport there. Even to go there and see the atmosphere and the fans and how they love their racing is going to be a definite eye-opener for me.”
This summer spent race-riding around the world and the experiences he is gaining, he sees as being the bedrock for a future phase of his career. His childhood between South Africa, Mauritius, Hong Kong and then Australia has given him an acute international scope, a first-hand appreciation of the sport’s global connectivity.
“It’s probably inevitable at some stage I end up riding in Hong Kong or Japan,” he continues. “They’re probably the top two jurisdictions in the world, money-wise, racing-wise, horse level-wise.
“Obviously, it’s quite hard to ride in Japan full-time as you need to learn their language. But, at school, I studied Japanese because I thought, even as a 10-year-old kid, I thought, oh, if I want to ride in Japan, I’ve got to know Japanese. Unfortunately, I’ve actually forgotten a fair bit of that, but it’s definitely the main goal to ride in Hong Kong and Japan.
“I probably don’t want to head there too young, though,” he adds, “I’ve got a few more goals I want to achieve first.”
Lloyd’s travels and life choices are not coincidental: while performance, connections and contacts might lead to an invitation to ride somewhere, there’s a plan at work, not necessarily in terms of definite specifics being scheduled as such and such happening at such and such a time, but certainly a general mapping of his career and the direction he wants it to take.
As a schoolboy, as well as Japanese, he chose other classes that he recognised would help him as a jockey: physical education to learn about the body – practice and theory – and accounting in years 10, 11 and 12 because “I thought, I’m going to have money,” he says.
Three years ago, he picked up two suspensions so took a working holiday to England, riding out for Godolphin trainer Charlie Appleby at Newmarket.
“I found it fascinating, riding those types of horses and the different work,” he says. “So, you look at all the great riders that have done it before me and it’s obviously a very good stepping stone.
“You need the ability, and I believe I do, but first you’ve got to build a good foundation where you’re situated. For me, that’s Australia. But you’ve got to be able to push yourself and try different things; meet new people.”
Lloyd’s parents are big proponents of his international outlook. His dad understands well the importance of learning and continual development, and how racing in different countries will improve a jockey’s all-round ability.
“My dad has always pushed, drummed into my head, to work as hard as possible and make yourself uncomfortable and that’s how you get better,” Lloyd says.
His dad knows from his own decades of race-riding experience that improvement doesn’t end, that there are always new things to learn and old things to tweak.
“It’s great to try any young rider on different tracks,” Jeff says. “There’s so many different tracks and various tempos in races in different countries, and different styles. It’s about just trying to absorb as much information as you can from around the world.”
He mentions that he believes his son’s riding improved for only being allowed six strikes with the whip in England, while South Africa would present the new challenge of riding tracks with false or cutaway rails.
“He rode better in England than he’d ever ridden because you get forced, like Ryan Moore, to go for the whip as late as possible, which is the way you should always ride,” Jeff says.
Whether at home or away, father and son will discuss and analyse every ride: Jeff the coach, Zac the knowledgeable, engaged student.
“If there’s something, I’ll pick it up, like, if I can see something’s creeping in, I’ll mention it and then we’ll try and correct it,” Jeff continues.
“Because he’s very tall, at one stage I felt his irons were dropping too long because he was adapting to growing, but that took away a style or the strength while sitting long. I just didn’t think his weight was in the right place.
“When I said this to him, he’d been riding a couple of years, he said, ‘no, my balance isn’t good enough, I don’t feel great like that,’ and I said ‘well then stay as you are.’ And then probably a year ago I said to him, ‘why don’t you try that again? I still think you’ll be better.’ And he tried, he shortened up, and he said, ‘I felt so good.’ He’d matured and he could adapt by picking his irons up a hole or two and still feel balanced and strong. So, things like that, we’re always trying to improve.”
Lloyd’s recent working holiday to England came about through an invitation from Newmarket’s most upwardly mobile trainer, George Boughey, who has a cohort of equally internationally-minded young talents riding his horses in their morning work: two with Hong Kong backgrounds, too, the Callan boys, Jack and Henry, as well as Britain’s precocious sensation Billy Loughnane.
Loughnane was already a friend of Lloyd’s, as is David Egan, a little older at 27, but a bright young talent himself in his day and still on the up. Lloyd stayed with Egan in Newmarket.
“It went very, very well and probably one of the best decisions I’ve made,” Lloyd says. “I got the vibe from the whole living in Newmarket, to be fair. It’s a great place to go and push yourself, to better yourself, because you’re surrounded by a lot of people who are trying to do the same thing. Surround yourself with good people and good things will come.”
That concept has been true for Lloyd from day one. With his father and mother and older siblings – Jaden, also a jockey, and Tayah – around him he has been enveloped in a strong family unit that is rooted in horse racing.
As well as his dad being a successful Group 1-winning rider, his mum brings a potent strand to the gene pool. Her father was Aubrey Roberts and her grandfather the great Charlie Barends, both top level jockeys in South Africa. And that makes the Lloyd kids cousins to another Sydney-based jockey with a Hong Kong childhood, Chad Schofield, son of Glyn and Tiffany Schofield. Tiffany is Nicola Lloyd’s sister.
Those connections can take a young man far in this game, but only so far. Talent can’t be feigned and commitment can’t be blagged, not for long anyway.
Zac Lloyd has both the talent and the commitment, there’s no faking and no blagging. His enthusiasm for the sport he loves runs deep, and his innate confidence, born of familiarity, the lifelong normalcy of being immersed in racing and its elite players, is taking him to places which, as a kid, he not only dreamed of being but kind of also expected to be. ∎
