The horses
A cavalryman in Argentina, a trainer and racehorse owner at the Cape, stables at Rugby in 1931 — and four further generations of jockeys and trainers after him. The horse tradition was the truest thing the family remembered.
The claim, and what became of it
Confirmed The family said he brought horse breeding and racing from Argentina to South Africa. Four documents, from four unconnected places, now say he was a horseman:
| Date | Document | What it says |
|---|---|---|
| 1915 | Argentine passport, military service | Served in the Guardia Nacional, 6º de Caballería — the 6th Cavalry. A horseman in Argentina before he was anything at the Cape. |
| 1931 | Cape Town municipal building file KAB 3/CT 4/2/1/3/474, B796 | "Plans of proposed STABLES, Koeberg Road, Rugby. RP Lerena." |
| 1940 | Argentine passport, profession | Trainer. |
| 1950 | Union of South Africa death certificate A 214036 | Race Horse Owner. |
And in the debts of his estate, between a garage bill and an insurance premium, a claim from W. C. Blake for £26 of carrots. The estate →
Still overstated The literal claim — that South Africa had no racing before a Lerena arrived — cannot stand: organised racing at the Cape long predates him. What is now documented is narrower and sturdier: he was a horse-dealer, a trainer and an owner, he came out of Argentine cavalry, and he built stables at the Cape.
And the family says more than that
"Pablo had big stables in Cape Town… Pablo used to import horses into South Africa from Argentina for the ZA government. He then also brought in some horses for his own stables from there."
That is exactly the testable form of the horse claim which this archive set out on its first day, before any of it was known — that he imported Argentine bloodstock, rather than inventing South African racing. It is family testimony and not yet a document, but it names something findable: government remount and bloodstock contracts, and import registrations with a country of origin.
Four generations after him
Public record The South African racing press describes a Lerena dynasty, and its account of the earlier generations matches this archive's documents without having consulted them:
Gavin Lerena's great-grandfather and grandfather were trainers.
On the family's own chart that great-grandfather is Pablo Armando Lerena and that grandfather is his son Ricardo Juan Carlos (b. 1920). So an Argentine consular passport of 1940 and the modern racing press, with no connection whatever, call the same man a trainer.
- Carlos "Tex" Lerena — a top jockey for 22 years, who also rode in Mauritius. Gavin's father; Ricardo's son.
- Spike Lerena — former jockey, leading Gauteng trainer, trained Jungle Rock. Gavin's uncle.
- Gavin Lerena — champion jockey. Stephen Lerena, Spike's son, trains at Randjesfontein; Brandon rides for the Ricky Maingard stable.
Cross-confirmed One detail deserves singling out. The racing press names Frederick Chapell — a jockey who trained Migraine, winner of the 1957 Durban July — as a great-uncle of this family. The family tree supplies the connection: Ricardo Juan Carlos Lerena married Doreen May Chappell (1921–1999). Ricardo is Gavin's grandfather, so a Chappell of Doreen's generation is exactly a "great uncle" to Gavin.
A family tree and the South African racing press, neither aware of the other, put a Chappell beside this family in the same generation. That is what corroboration looks like.
Resolved
The two Chappells are one woman under two names. Rose Forbes had first been married to a Chappell and had a daughter, Doreen May Chappell. Rose then married Roque in 1936; Doreen married Roque's brother Ricardo in 1941. Roque had married his own brother's mother-in-law — which is why the Corpus Christi annotation names his bride "Rosalina Wilhelmina Chappell", her name by the earlier marriage, and why the family remembered that the two brothers "never spoke again".
Living people are named here only as public figures, from published racing sources. No relationship is asserted that a record does not carry. Method →
Gilberto Justiniano Lerena Lenguas
Documented
The name is already written into Argentine racing at the highest level. Gilberto Justiniano Lerena Lenguas was a co-founder of the Argentine Stud Book — the national thoroughbred registry itself — and bred Old Man, winner of the Argentine Quadruple Crown. He was associated with Stud Oriental, Stud Bend Or, Haras La Guardia, Haras El Moro and Haras Las Ortigas, and owned his own Haras El Viejo.
A Group 1 race still carries his name. The Gran Premio Gilberto Lerena is run at the Hipódromo Argentino de Palermo in Buenos Aires over 2,200 metres on turf, for fillies and mares of three years and up. It was founded in 1905 as the Premio Abril and renamed in his honour in 1914.
Two details are worth holding onto. First, Lerena Lenguas is a River Plate double surname and Lenguas is Uruguayan — consistent with the name's Uruguayan density and with Stud Oriental, oriental being the ordinary Argentine word for Uruguayan. Second, the 1914 renaming is the kind of honour usually paid at or just after a death, which brackets his life and gives the search a date to work around.
13 September 2026 — that guess turned out to be right, and it arrived from the parish register
The paragraph above was written on 8 September as an inference: that Lenguas looked Uruguayan, and that Stud Oriental was a Uruguayan’s name for a stud. Five days later the Rosario baptism index was read end to end, 1731 to 1901, and the single Lerena in a hundred and seventy years turned out to be a child of Don Luis Lerena Lenguas and Doña Julia Juanicó — the act saying of both, “naturales del E. Oriental”.
Published Uruguayan genealogy makes that Luis a brother of Gilberto: both sons of Luis Lerena y Fernández (1811–1878) and Justiniana Lenguas González of Montevideo. And the child baptised at Rosario carries Justiniana as her fifth name, for that grandmother.
So the turf and the parish register arrive at the same Montevideo house from opposite ends. It remains what it was — a lead of real weight, and no relationship. But the guess about Stud Oriental was not a guess for very long. Hypothesis 1c → · What was read →
The 1866 act is primary and was read at full resolution.
13 September 2026, later that day — the brotherhood moved out of the published genealogy and into the registers
The paragraph above says “published Uruguayan genealogy makes that Luis a brother of Gilberto”, and footnotes it as secondary — Geneanet, Geni, a blog. That footnote is now out of date.
Two Uruguayan parish records, entered for two different children of Gilberto’s own, give his parents as Luis and Justiniana Lenguas. They were found by searching not the surname but the mother — Justiniana Lenguas — which is the only stable name in a family the clerks and the indexers between them write as Lerena, Lorena, Serena, Languas and Lenquas. The same eight rows returned four siblings: Justinia (1843), Luis Eugenio (1843), Alberto Otario (1850), Gilberto (c.1854) and María Ema (1857).
And the same search found Luis Eugenio’s death — 24 December 1901, act 216, image read — which names his father Luis Lerena, already dead, and his mother Justiniana Lenguas, alive at seventy-nine and in the house. It also gives his profession: hacendado. A landowner. The first statement of this family’s standing anywhere in the archive — and a man of land and horses is a rather different neighbour for a stud than a name on a blog.
The paragraph that stood here said “and it is still not primary — neither image has been opened”. That was true when it was written and false about an hour later, and it stood for a day. The image was opened. See below. It remains true that none of this finds Juan Carlos, who is in none of those five siblings, and that it does not connect Pablo Armando to any of them.
Act nº 1447 — the priest’s own hand
San Francisco de Asís, Ciudad Vieja, Montevideo, folio 504, 31 October 1886, in the hand of Martín Pérez. The baptism of Gilberto’s daughter María Angélica Julia:
…bauticé solemnemente a María Angélica Julia… hija legítima de Don Gilberto Lerena y de Doña Julia Salvanach, orientales: abuelos paternos: Don Luis y Doña Justiniana Lenguas: maternos: Don Cristóbal, Doña Angela Alvarez: fueron padrinos: Don Rufino Yurramendi y Doña Julia Juanicó de Lerena
The paternal grandparents are the couple named as Luis Eugenio’s parents in his marriage act of 1864 and his death act of 1901. So the brotherhood is no longer an inference from two index entries: it is what a priest wrote down while the family stood in front of him.
Two new people out of the same line: Don Cristóbal and Doña Angela Alvarez, Julia Salvanach’s parents, who had never appeared in this archive before.
And a second act says it too. The baptism of another of his sons, Raúl Alfredo Luis, at the Catedral Basílica de Montevideo on 10 September 1885, gives the same grandparents in a different year, a different parish and a different hand. Two registers agreeing is a different thing from one register read twice. What was read →
His household — and the year the horses crossed the river
Searching Gilberto as a father across the Argentine collections — which had never been done here — gives eight children by Julia Salvanach, and they fall into two halves:
| Born at Montevideo | Born at Buenos Aires |
|---|---|
| Gilberto, 1878 | María Carlota, bapt. 29 Oct 1890, Recoleta |
| Carlos, 1884 — bapt. Iglesia del Cordón | Luis Felipe, bapt. 1892, Constitución |
| Raúl Alfredo Luis, 10 July 1885 | César Alberto, 1896 |
| María Angélica Julia, bapt. 31 Oct 1886 | Horacio Alfredo, bapt. 1898, Recoleta |
And Juan Carlos is not among the eight. That is worth saying plainly, because this was the best remaining place to put him — a Lerena household of the right surname, in the right country, at the right time, descending from the one Uruguayan house this archive has documented.
The archive claims no relationship. With a surname borne by only 2,124 people worldwide, a documented Lerena at the centre of Argentine breeding, in the same country and the same pursuit the family remembers, is a lead of real weight. It is not a lead that may be assumed into a fact. Rarity makes a connection likely; only a document makes it true.
Lerena in South African racing
Documented The name is also present in South African racing today — Gavin Lerena is among the country's leading jockeys, riding at Turffontein and the major Highveld and Cape meetings.
When this page was first written the archive claimed no relationship, on the grounds that a shared rare surname is a proposal and not a proof. The family's own descendant chart has since supplied the descent — Pablo Armando → Ricardo → Carlos "Tex" → Gavin — and the racing press independently describes the same succession of trainers. The founder-cluster reading was right.
How this gets settled
The stud books
The South African Stud Book and the Jockey Club registers record owners, breeders, farms and — critically — imported horses with their country of origin. An Argentine import under a Lerena name would be conclusive. The Argentine Stud Book is the matching volume at the other end.
Racing calendars and the press
Owners' colours, race cards and results were printed weekly in both countries. A single card naming a Lerena as owner or breeder dates his presence and often his farm.
Haras El Viejo
Gilberto Lerena's own stud. Its records, sales and dispersal — and any family succession — are the direct route into his household, and thence to whether it connects here.
Shipping
Live bloodstock moved by sea under documentation. Cargo manifests and quarantine records between Buenos Aires and Cape Town would show an importation directly.
Sources for this page
Wikipedia, Gran Premio Gilberto Lerena (accessed 8 September 2026, re-read 13 September) · Rosario, Bautismos 1865–1867, folio 229, act 1541 (FamilySearch image ark 3:1:S3HT-XS9C-ZL) · Geneanet (jfina tree), Geni, and El Patriciado del Río de la Plata, all secondary · Sporting Post and South African racing press for Gavin Lerena · Forebears for the distribution figures. The reservations about the family claim are the archive's own.