LARRY'S VIEW - AND THE WORLD CAME CRASHING DOWN

By Larry Cassidy | Friday, December 9, 2011

Larry Cassidy currently has forty-two Group 1 successes behind his name. He is a multiple Premiership winning jockey having taken out three titles in Sydney and one in Brisbane. Larry’s View, the personal blog of this top class rider will appear on horseracingonly.com.au every Friday, workload permitting.

The four horse fall ten days ago at Doomben brought a number of questions from readers. Do I remember much about the incident? How scary is it lying on the ground waiting for your injuries to be assessed? Do moments like that make me question why I am doing what I do? How does it effect you afterwards? And there were others.

I’ll try to give as many answers as I can. So here goes. Let’s go back and you can take the ride with me.

Leading up to the fall, I thought Luminous Harmony had a very good chance of winning the race. As we got to the 600 I was just starting to move into the race. I was just trying to watch what was happening up in front of me.

The horses were racing a little bit staggered … away from the fence. I just started to move outside Priscilla (Schmidt, riding Tisani Boy) when her horse clipped heels. As it went down its hindquarters actually turned out to be underneath my horse.

Explaining it takes a while, but what goes through your head all happens in a split second.

In two strides I thought I got over the fallen horse. Priscilla, at that stage, was not underneath my horse, as I looked down, she was to my right hand side at my horse’s girth. Straight away I thought, oh I’ve missed her and thought, I’ve avoided the fall.

Next minute … the next I knew, I’d been tripped up. My horses back legs got tangled up in her horse’s legs. The way it tripped my mount I actually went out and to the side. As I hit the ground I just remember telling myself … just roll. I always say to myself just roll, because if you are rolling you have got less chance of getting hurt.

So there I was rolling, but I was rolling in a sideways manner. It wasn’t a forward roll it was sideways, which was probably not good because it elongates your body … it makes you longer … and a bigger target for trouble.

While that was happening, little did I know that another two horses fell behind me. The horse right behind me … I think it was Mohawk … he was in a roll on the ground when his back legs came down over me and hit me like a baseball bat.

I remember the impact, really vividly. I actually thought it was a horse coming over and landing on top of me. I didn’t realize it was only its legs.

The actual impact, you can see on the video, makes my body react. A mate of mine … he made me laugh … he said, ‘you curled up and looked like a boomerang for a split second.’

Obviously the impact was quite hard and then I went a bit limp after that.

The blow came down right on my side. It was about mid-rib to about where your love handles are … about that area. I wish I had bigger love handles because it might have helped cushion the impact.

Then obviously, you know, everything goes quiet.

My first reaction was to take my skull cap off. The fall winded me. I struggled to breathe and when I did breathe it was hurting a lot, so I knew it was more than just being winded.

By the time the medics came … lying on the ground I wasn’t getting enough air … so I asked them to sit me up. Once I sat up I could get more air, but it was hurting. They laid me back down.

My body has just taken a beating, but I was able to identify the pain. I knew it was in my side, but I also had terrible pain down the back of my legs. From my buttocks down to behind my knee … it was quite a strange feeling. Something like pins and needles, but extremely painful.

Their first reaction when I told them was to ask me, can you move your feet? I could move them, but it did hurt. I was actually pleased that it was painful, because I thought if I could feel it, there is no serious, serious damage.

They did throw a neck-brace on me and obviously they didn’t want me to move. They just wanted me to lay still and the neck-brace was there because the pain was to my lower back and buttocks so they just threw it on as a precautionary measure.

I think the extended period of time we were on the track … I know that caused extra concern … was because the ambulances which were going to take us to hospital hadn’t arrived, so it was a longer time than it normally would have been. They weren’t going to move us till the ambulances arrived.

They had asked me if I wanted to take something for the pain, but I turned that down. Then the pain was getting worse so they gave me a shot of morphine. That was still on the track itself.

When you realize there is nothing seriously wrong and you just have to wait it out, you do try to make light of it a bit. Like I said to the guys, at least I wouldn’t have to ride track-work the next morning. It hurt when I laughed.

Then, when we got to the hospital, they asked me to rate the level of pain. I gave it a seven out of ten. They said that’s quite severe. So they gave me a full body check. They rolled me over and when they turned me it hurt like hell. They thought I maybe had broken ribs and a ruptured spleen because of where the pain was coming from.

They took me for scans. They came back clear … which was great. They x-rayed my hips because I had that pain deep in my hips. They thought I might have done some cartilage where the join comes in or have a hair-line fracture, but that came back negative too … which was a huge relief.

So they basically cleared me then.

I was discharged lunch-time the next day. The physio came through and took me through some breathing exercises. They gave me pain-killers because the pain the next day was probably still a seven … but you know, I walked away. Well, I limped away … slowly.
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I then went up to see Priscilla. She was in quite a lot of pain. I know she’s got bad injuries but, you know, considering what happened, I think she was incredibly lucky too. I mean a horse galloped over the top her. It could always have been worse.

My wife is a nurse. She didn’t see the fall, but I got her to tape it. She watched it before she came back into the hospital the next day. She said she just burst into tears, realizing how lucky we were and how much worse it could have been.

Do I ever question what I‘m doing and why I’m doing it, particularly when I’m lying on the track in that situation?

Let me answer it this way. A friend of mine did say, ah you should bloody give up. He said with falls like that, as you get older they are harder to come back from but, geez, when I watch the video of the fall, and obviously I’ve watched it dozens of times and replayed it … if I can get up and walk away from that, I’m feeling pretty indestructible.

Now I know that is probably a silly thing to say. It doesn’t mean you go out there and take things lightly … but, what I’m trying to get across is that somehow I emerged from the fall feeling quite upbeat about things.

I know I was just plain lucky, but the ‘upbeat’ part was the positive side of things, for whatever reason, so, no … I certainly didn’t think of giving the game away.

Another person said, do you think when you go back to riding it will have an effect on you?

Sometimes, yes it does, because it can make gaps look smaller, but I have no real worries about that.

I wanted to ride as soon as possible. I wanted to ride on the Saturday. I would have ridden, but I didn’t. That was because of the fact I couldn’t be sure that the drugs they gave me were out of my system.

The stewards did tell me they would drug test me. They warned me about that … and therefore if that test came back positive after turning up at the race knowingly in that condition … well, I could get a month on the sidelines for that.

I didn’t need that. So I didn’t take the chance. I didn’t ride on Saturday … but I was back in action on Wednesday.

And yes - I did bring my clearance!!!!

Sadly though, I didn’t pull up that flash after Wednesday’s meeting and I have decided it is in my best interests to give my body some ‘time out’ so that it can get some rest.

To that end I will be taking two weeks off race riding.

Not the ideal outcome but, like I say, it could have been worse.

Till next time,
Larry

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