SIX months ago Benalla apprentice jockey Amanda Masters had just started the painstaking road to recovery from a serious post race fall at Corowa.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
But on Saturday she will make her return to racing at Albury with several mounts for leading Benalla trainer Wayne Nichols.
The jockey suffered serious injury including a broken shoulder blade, nine broken ribs, a punctured lung, three minor fractures of the spine and a bleeding spleen after a post-race fall on the Kevin Evans-trained gelding Richelieu at Corowa in mid-June.
“It was a Victorian horse having his first try the NSW way of going and hung out all the way up the straight,” Masters said.
“After passing the finishing post the horse half dipped and threw me to the side and I landed on a steel upright in the mounting yard.”
Masters, 19, was flown to Royal Melbourne Hospital and placed in intensive care for several days and spent a total of 11-days in hospital followed by months of recuperating.
After being released from hospital she was also forced to undergo shoulder surgery.
She has been riding trackwork pain-free for the past two weeks including six trials at Wangaratta yesterday as well as daily gym sessions to strengthen her shoulder and get down to her riding weight.
Masters dismissed the race fall as an unfortunate mishap and said the accident hadn’t dulled her passion to remain a jockey.
“I’ve been that keen to get back into it for so long now ... I can’t wait for Saturday,” she said.
“I went back to trackwork about a month ago and I thought I was fine then but I wasn’t ... I just overdid it because I was so keen to get back into it.”
The apprentice jockey had been riding in career-best form before the accident and narrowly missed her first city winner aboard Dad Know’s Best at Sandown in May and rode Work The Body to victory in the Corowa Cup.
“Not long after my fall when I was still in hospital, Dad Know’s Best stablemate Evan Adam won in town and I was supposed to ride him.
“I was getting a few winners at the time of the accident ... but that’s always the way isn’t it?
“But I have got a couple of nice rides on Saturday and, while I’m not going to say I’m going to get a winner, I will be happy just to get around safely.”
