Galway jockey going through the pain barrier for his sport

IT was just another day at the Races says England-based Galway jockey Alain Cawley. That was until he came to the ninth fence in a two-and-a-quarter-mile handicap chase at Kempton and his horse, Surf and Turf, made the jump too early. All Cawley could do was brace himself.

The result of his horrific fall back on October 16th was two dislocated shoulders, one of which was also fractured, but it could have been a lot worse and Cawley knows it. On one level, it doesn’t bear thinking about but the Craughwell man insists that is the nature of the game. The show goes on.

All going well, he will be back in the saddle in early Spring, his injuries having no way diminished his love of the sport. He is mad to get going again. Jockeys? Tough out. To get to the point of return though, he has still some way to go.

For since the fall, Cawley, back in his native Craughwell last week, has been filling in his days with physio sessions in an effort to repair the nerve damage, maintain muscle form and get the power back into his two arms once more. To this end, he is spending a lot of time in Oaksey House, the rehabilitation unit provided and subsidised by the invaluable Injured Jockeys Fund.

“Without the Injured Jockeys Fund and Oaksey House we would be lost. It would be very tough,” says the 29-year-old. “That is where I am doing my recovery with the physio and all that. They do an unbelievable job.”

Thankfully, this has been the first time since Cawley moved to England in 2011 that he has had cause to use it, even though Oaksey House is open to jockeys fit or injured. In any event, the hour-long trip to Lambourn has become, for the time being at least, part of his daily routine across the Irish Sea.

“I will go to the gallop at Fergal O’Brien’s, Richard Hobson’s or Venetia Williams’ (all trainers) in the morning and watch the horses just to pass the time and then go to Oaksey House in the afternoon and do a couple of hours there and come back.

“Again, you couldn’t speak highly enough about them and there is no jockey who has been in there that hasn’t come out and said nothing but good things about them. It is an amazing place and they will get you back. They will probably have me fitter coming back than I was when I got injured.”

Even so, Cawley is not likely to forget the moment of impact on that day in mid-October. “I just took one of the falls where the horse rolled over me while another stood on top of me,” he recalls. “The only thing going through my head was getting the horse on top of me off me; I didn’t know if I had pain anywhere else. He could have been on me for five seconds but it felt like five minutes.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.