Life As I Know It (19 page)

I walked the Randwick track and was surprised to find the best going on the inside, right up against the fence. But, with horses fanning out, I thought I'd be able to cut the corner. In the race I got back and, as expected, she travelled well. Just as I thought the field was drifting to the centre of the track I stayed hard on the rail and saved a lot of ground. When it all opened up in front of me I thought I might win.

Little Yosei hit the front just like she had in the Sires Produce. I got such a rush of blood as we dashed up the rise at Randwick but then More Joyous and Shoot Out just ran her down. She ran third by a length. More Joyous was a popular winner, but Yosei certainly won the admiration of the crowd. She was applauded all the way in, as if she'd won the race. The owners, John Pittard and Rob and Barbara McClure, were so proud of her.

They decided to give Yosei a break and I would wait for her to come back in the Spring, when she would be set for the Epsom in Sydney and the Toorak in Melbourne. Yosei had been taking me all over the country but back at home I was getting some nice rides for Darren Weir. His star was continuing to rise. Good judges respected him as a horseman. Initially I had been a little apprehensive about asking Darren if I could ride trackwork for him as I assumed he was a blokey bloke. My sisters had always got on well with him, though. He was very fair. Jockeys know that if you do the work for Darren and his big team, he will put you on, which is the way I think it should be.

Not long after returning from Sydney I was riding El Divine, which was having its second start, in a 1000-metre race at Donald, a little town in the Wimmera in western Victoria. Darren thought he had a really good chance in the race and, when El Divine was standing so beautifully in the stalls, I thought he could be a winner. But as he came out of the outside barrier he didn't move his front legs, so when he jumped so powerfully with his hind legs he face-planted into the ground. He just went smack.

Because I was ready to jump with him, I was speared into the ground as well. On the footage of the incident it looks like I had broken my neck. It was a sickening fall. I was immediately stunned but was soon fully conscious. The barrier attendants were there first.

‘I can't feel my legs,' I said. Soon there were a lot of people around me.

‘Don't panic. Just lie down.'

As they were gathering around me I was getting even more worried.

‘I really can't feel my legs.'

‘Just relax.'

Back at the rooms Darren was shaking his head—he didn't give me a chance. He thought I was seriously injured.

After a while the feeling started to come back into my legs, which was such a relief. I was less concerned about the injuries I might have suffered. I was placed on a stretcher and the ambulance took me to the Ballarat Base Hospital, where a CT scan showed I had five vertebrae fractured down the left-hand side, from T6 to T10, the fifth to the ninth cervical (neck) vertebra, and three broken ribs. I also had a terrible concussion again and was very sick.

To my surprise, I was allowed to leave hospital. At home in Melbourne, I had the same vomiting reaction as I'd had with my other falls. My brain felt really swollen, as if it was too big for my skull again. I started icing my head to alleviate some of the pain and pressure that were making me feel hideously nauseous. I couldn't keep the painkillers down once again. Everyone was really worried. Therese, who lives just around the corner, came over on the second day and insisted I come to stay at her place. The car trip of only a few minutes took thirty because we had to keep stopping for me to be sick.

Therese wanted to take me to hospital but I knew I couldn't travel and I was getting worse. The pain was excruciating, so bad I just felt like I wanted to die.

‘We've got to get you to hospital,' she kept saying.

‘I can't. I just can't.' I was not good.

Therese called Dr Mulkearns and he called around. He gave me an injection to stop the vomiting, which worked for a few hours and settled me, but I continued vomiting for two more days.
It was awful. When it stopped I felt a tremendous relief. Although my ribs were painful, the spinal injury wasn't too bad.

In the next few weeks I coped reasonably well. The same conversations took place, with family members suggesting I stop riding. But I knew that I had just been involved in some freakish incidents, things that horses never normally did. El Divine planted his feet. Vladivostok fell over. I thought it was just really, really bad luck and, if I was going to retire, I wanted it to be on my own terms. I had more to do, more to give. I also knew that Yosei was spelling in the paddock after the Doncaster, and that she'd be coming back around the same time I was. That was a tremendous motivation for me. She had something to give, too.

I also had a chance to get away again. My sister Maree and her husband Brett Prebble were living in Hong Kong, so I decided to go over and visit them. Later that year Brett would be back to ride in the Melbourne Cup and he would win on Green Moon. After spending time with them I went sailing off the coast of Croatia with friends Rosie and Kelly Myers. I trained every day while I was on the yacht and whenever we docked.

All the time I was travelling I was telling myself to stay positive, not to let my run of falls get me down. The thought of Yosei was a great help. Yosei, in Japanese, means ‘the fairy', and she was my invincible spirit.

Around mid August we both returned to racing, to ride in the Cockram Stakes at Caulfield. She dropped back to last, then worked her way into the race, but made no real impression. She wasn't quite ready. Stuey freshened her and she came back three weeks later in the Let's Elope Stakes at Flemington in early September. She finished midfield. She was getting fitter. Next start would be the million dollar Epsom Handicap in Sydney. I was excited for this!

A few weeks later, on 21 August 2012, I was riding Julinsky, a first starter, for Darren Weir at Ararat, which is the next major
town west of Ballarat, about two hours out of Melbourne. Another runner came out on the home turn and I nicked its heel. I went down again, face-first. I was flipped onto my back and Julinsky and I slid down the track together. I was lucky and grateful that she didn't roll over me. I woke up in the ambulance.

‘Please tell me this is a bad dream,' I asked. I genuinely had no idea.

‘No, it isn't. I'm sorry,' the ambulance guy said.

Oh, no, I thought to myself. No! Do I have to go through it all again? I was going to miss out on the Epsom, the Toorak, the Spring Carnival. I was devastated.

It was the same pain as the Donald fall only four months before. The same pain, except on the other side, so I knew I had a major back injury.

After being assessed at Ararat, I was taken to Ballarat Hospital. I'd had five breaks on the left at Donald; this time it was three on the right side of the same vertebrae. I knew it was going to be awful. Could I go through it again? The pain? The nausea? Mark Zahra was at the hospital waiting for me. By this stage we had broken up but we'd been through so much together; he was always there to pick me up and take me to be with Dad at Home.

Dad comforted me.

‘Ahh, Little Girl,' he said in a gentle voice. It was the voice of pure love.

‘I think that's enough, Dad,' I said. ‘I think that's it. I think someone's trying to tell me something and I'm not listening. How can somebody be so unlucky?' Then Dad said something I wasn't expecting.

‘You don't have to make a decision tonight; you've got plenty of time to decide. Sleep on it.' At that moment I not only realised my father loved me, I also knew he knew me.

Later that night, lying in bed at Home—there was actually a bed for me this time—with a broken back and aching head, as I was waiting for the same four days of nausea to kick in, I was thinking about everything. I had thought Dad would be happy; that he would be thinking, hooray, the penny has dropped and she will retire. But it didn't take me long, probably not even the time before I went to sleep, before I knew that I wasn't going to let this latest setback stop me. I still wanted to retire at some stage on my own terms.

The nausea arrived, on cue. True to form, it was four days of torture.

I'd had too many concussions. I think everyone was worried about my head, including the racing authorities. A few months went by and I had to undergo a neuropsych assessment to be passed fit to ride. A woman came around to my house and put me through a series of tests, which included puzzles and memory exercises and other thinking challenges. I'd never done one of these before. It went on for well over four hours, and was easily the hardest series of tests I've ever done. I passed it sufficiently well that I was given the all-clear to ride. Thankfully, touch wood, I haven't had a fall since.

That summer Patrick wanted to campaign a number of his horses in Tasmania. The Cup carnivals in Hobart and Launceston run through January and February. Our family has enjoyed success in Tassie but I wasn't ready to ride. It was a great opportunity for me to get away, though, and start on my comeback. Just after our big
family gathering in Christmas 2013, I caught the ferry with my car to spend a few weeks in Hobart looking after the horses.

It was like a retreat, with time alone to contemplate. I stayed in a cabin at a caravan park. It was pretty basic, but it had all I needed. With a lot of time on my hands I explored, and found the beauty of Hobart, with its clear water and inlets and the hills and Mount Wellington, quite calming. I worked Patrick's horses along the beaches. I sat under trees, taking it easy, trying to work out what I would do. Wondering.

In passing the neuropsych test my short-term future was assured. I would return to race riding as soon as I was ready. But what about the long term? I could hear different voices in my head: Margie and her husband Nick wanted me to retire; the Loreto girls made the life of twenty-somethings, their work and play, sound like a lot of fun; I had my own ideas about buying a farm, somewhere near Home, and starting a life as a jockey–trainer, and hopefully having a family. Some people were suggesting a career in media. Not Dad, though. When I did a stint as a panellist on racing station TVN, he laughed at me and said, ‘Little Girl, you were so boring I had to change the channels.' And then gave me a lecture on modulating my voice.

I decided I wasn't ready for these changes yet. Despite all of my falls and setbacks, I still loved horses, I was still a jockey and I still wanted to be the best jockey I could be. I hadn't come close yet. And I could still hear the voice of my little self: ‘I just wanna win the Melbourne Cup.'

Patrick's horses were stabled at a property just near Seven Mile Beach and I worked them on the sand every day. It was idyllic. I was half-expecting a film crew with gorgeous models in white robes to arrive to shoot a perfume ad. I was also riding the horses on a proper racecourse. Patrick was ringing me often to check that all was well with the horses. He would occasionally come down to
Hobart. When he did, he trained me hard, getting me to do sprints on the beach, especially if we'd been out to dinner the night before.

With no racing commitments I was free to eat and drink as I pleased. I lived on oysters, straight from the water. I had six with a bit of lemon every morning and six more, lightly floured and fried, later in the day. I knew they were good ones because whenever Patrick came to stay he'd pinch them from the fridge. I'd also buy the freshest fish from a fisho who parked his van near the airport.

Fieldmaster had won the Devonport Cup for Patrick's great mate Steven Arnold and was being prepared for the Hobart and Launceston cups. My first ride back was on him, in a 2100-metre race. He ran fifth in that Hobart Cup, behind Darren Weir's Hurdy Gurdy Man. He was not quite right going into the Launceston Cup and finished fifth there as well.

Once that campaign was over I returned to Melbourne and dropped into the Weir complex next to Home. Stevie was still thriving there. He was helping with the horses and strapping. Darren was showing himself to be a very astute judge of horses and he was becoming more and more successful. I went to see him to tell him I was riding again.