MARTIN HARLEY - A TRULY INSPIRATIONAL STORY
By Graham Potter | Monday, June 16, 2025
The horse, of course, is the hero and the co-trainers trainers deserve a huge chunk of the credit , but the achievement of Martin Harley in piloting the Chris and Corey Munce trained Cool Archie to a fifth successive victory in the Group 1 JJ Atkins, two-and-a-half years after suffering potentially career threatening injuries in a race fall at Doomben back in January 2023, is the big, back story of an amazing result for the entire Cool Archie team.
The fall and the massive, unwavering effort Harley put into his recovery is best told by Harley himself, and he did that when he described the process of all he had gone through in an interview with HRO back in June 2023, an interview which is well worth repeating here.
“Considering we had only gone a hundred meters after the start and weren’t at full speed or anything, it was a pretty simple fall, but a pretty bad smash-up,” explained Harley when he returned to riding after the fall in June 2023.
“I had a broken shoulder. I had three broken vertebra in my neck … C0, C1 and C2 … and, yeah, a bit of bruising around the ribs.
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