LARRY'S VIEW - ON THE COMEBACK TRAIL

By Larry Cassidy | Friday, February 3, 2012

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.

Well, it has been awhile since I last posted my blog on HRO.

That was just after I had suffered a bad race fall and I thought I might be out of action for maybe a couple of weeks, but life has a way of turning man-made timeframes on its head. There are some things that you are just unable to control and my injury woes of the past two months fall into that category.

When I had my fall on that Wednesday (November 30) I was taken straight to hospital where I had X-rays and a scan on my hip. They came back saying, apart from general bruising and some rib cartilage damage, that … although I was in a lot of pain … there was nothing seriously wrong with me

I didn’t ride that Saturday because the stewards said they would drug test me and the medication I had been given wouldn’t have been out of my system by then, but I did ride on the following Wednesday.

I didn’t do well physically that day. Riding was alright, but it was things I needed to do in-between races that were really tough … like bending down to get my gear. I went away thinking I just couldn’t do that, so I decided to go to the doctor to tell him how I felt and maybe get him to put me off for two weeks.

Then, apart from the pain from my ribs, my knee started giving me a lot of trouble. It was becoming more and more painful and I was limping quite badly. I found that if I was on my right leg for more than half-an-hour I was in a pretty bad way.

I thought, something’s wrong, so I rang the Jockey’s Association. They have a specialist and they were able to fit me in a couple of days later.

So I went there with severe pain in my lower front rib-cage which I thought was getting worse. The doctor sent me for an ultra-sound. I got that result straight away. The bloke said, you’ve got four badly broken ribs! The breaks were
actually round nearer my spine, but the pain was in my lower front, but the doctor said that was normal as the pain just gets sent down the nerves.

I had a scan on my knee. My knee was black. You can say bruised quite severely, but it was black. I had to go back three days later to get the result and the doctor said, how on earth are you even walking. You’ve got two fractures in your leg.

The bone on the back of the leg had been crushed in about 1mm and there were
two fractures undisplaced down into the bone.

There was nothing that could be done with either set of injuries except to rest and allow then time to heal. It was pretty much just sit at home in front of the TV, have a beer with my leg up and with my children running around doing things for me.

So the original two-week timetable went out of the window. My new target was
aiming to ride on Magic Millions day. It didn’t take long for me to realize I would not be ready by then, so I thought, let’s do this properly and come back when I am right. I had to leave that to my body to tell me when I was good to go. The body heals at its own speed and you just have to go along with it.

I couldn’t exercise either for most of this time. I did try walking … just a slow walk, like twenty minutes … and my knee would blow up. So I thought, ok … I’ll just slow down altogether.

So once the proper diagnose had been made, it was a matter for me of knowing my body and listening to what it was telling me during the healing process.

I’ve been back in training for about three-and-a-half weeks and I’ve been riding work for two weeks before I started riding race-day.

At the moment I’m on doctors orders saying that I can ride four horses per meeting. That is only for the next two weeks until next Saturday.

Riding race-day is different. It can really bugger you if you are not up to speed. My first day back was last Saturday. I could feel that I had lost a lot of strength in my injured leg. It’s smaller than my other leg, so that is how much muscle I have lost in it.

It’s just a matter of building that up. It’s a time process again. Wednesday compared to last Saturday … much better. It will probably still take me two weeks to get where I should be, but I’m on the right path.

Weight is another thing I have to work on. I’m struggling to ride 54 at the moment. Obviously I put on a lot of weight while out of action and not able to exercise properly so that is another battle I face on a daily basis … but it will come good. I’ve just got to keep attacking it. Again, it’s just a process.

Even though this is the longest period of time I have ever had off in my career … I cannot complain. I’ve been riding for twenty-six years and this is the longest I have ever been out of the saddle. Considering that, I’ve got to believe that I’ve been very lucky in my career.

While it has been hard for me physically, mentally I feel I’m coming back more relaxed, especially with the QCAT decision coming down in my favour. (RQL stewards originally suspended Cassidy for three months for his ride on Trump. Cassidy had that decision reversed on appeal. Stewards appealed that verdict. QCAT ruled against them).

A lot of people don’t know that the QCAT hearing was the day before I fell and we only got the decision last week. So, while I was plagued by injury I also had that decision hanging over my head. While I was always confident of that outcome it is still some sort of worry until it is finalized.

So that’s all behind me.

Now it’s just the matter of getting back and riding winners.

Till next week,
Larry

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