Hard to keep a good jockey down

 

 

By Thomas Conway

 

Phillip Donovan had always wanted to be a jockey.

From the first time he threw his leg over the saddle of a pony at the age of seven or eight, the Moneygall native unlocked a built-in ambition to forge a career flying around Fairyhouse, Cheltenham, Aintree and wherever else there was a race to be run.

By the age of 19, that dream was coming nicely to fruition. His intention was to pursue jumps, but at the time he was content to establish himself in Ireland on the flat, seizing any opportunities that came his way. You probably know where this is going, but keep reading, the story is one worth hearing.

“I had about a hundred rides on the flat in Ireland, I rode five winners. So like most jockeys I was only starting to get going and then I got a fall. I broke my neck,” he began.

Initially it looked serious. Very serious. The corollary to a broken neck is usually some form of paralysis, which is exactly what Philly experienced in the days after the fall. His mother and father were informed of the grave possibility that he would never walk again. The sombre reality of a spinal injury is known only to those who suffer one, and in many cases, the extent of the potential damage only becomes apparent hours or even days later.

“I was out exercising a horse, over in the Curragh. The horse dropped me off and as I was falling it kicked me between the back of the helmet and just above the bridge of my neck. I was knocked out but I came through shortly afterwards, and at the time I thought I was fine. I kept telling the lads around me that I wanted to get up, but I wasn’t actually able to,” he revealed.

Remarkably, he recovered, and was back on the saddle just six months later at the Listowel Festival. The injury turned out to be a spinal concussion, a ‘transient disturbance of spinal cord function’, to use the medical definition. In other words, the paralysis was temporary, subsiding within a few days, but that shouldn’t undermine the seriousness of the injury – which forced fellow jockey Davy Condon to retire in 2015 following a fall in the Grand National.

 

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