LARRY'S VIEW - TIME FOR A FRESHEN-UP

By Larry Cassidy | Friday, July 13, 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.

I had scheduled a short ten day break after Wednesday’s meeting, but I hadn’t anticipated that I would end up limping away on ‘holiday’.

That’s how I left Eagle Farm on Wednesday … limping quite badly. I picked up an issue with my knee which is the one I had the fractures in. It got worse on Wednesday because I had hurt my sciatic nerve in my left leg the day before and I was in pain all day on Tuesday so, of course, I when I walked around I had all my weight on my bad leg and, as a consequence, it played up the next day.

So while it is a planned break it basically would have turned into an enforced layoff anyway. It will probably be fine with a week off. I’ll probably slowly start exercising next week. I may even take a ride next Friday, or I’m hoping to ride next Saturday.

I know I’m always going to have problems with my knee. The doctor has said it is never going to be perfect.

The plan was only to have a short break. It’s not that much time off and I won’t back off on my exercise schedule completely. I don’t want to put on too much weight. It’s realistically just a bit of a freshen up as opposed to taking time off completely.

A lot of jockeys do schedule holidays for this time of year, right at the end of the season. I wasn’t going to this year, because I had those two months off with injury during the season, but since then I’ve ridden four days … sometimes five days … a week.

That involves all the constant training, losing weight … it has just made me very tired. I just need to get away for a short time. Like I say, I just need a freshen up.

You call a break when you see fit and you take your chances with the results that happen while you are away. I certainly won’t be sitting in front of the TV watching races. I will probably check results now and then. If a couple of your rides win, so be it. It won’t be the first time. It not going to be the last. There is probably no good time to take a break, but you just have to do it.

Above all, it really is probably all to do with getting your mind right. With all of the repetition you go through you can get a bit sour in the mind. So the break from action is not only to allow the body a rest, it is very much about adjusting and improving your mindset, which is such an important thing in this game.

So, yeah, it is a short and sweet blog this week. I’ll be away next week and so my next blog will be posted on July 27.

Till then,
Larry

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