Beasley focusing on the future after his world was turned upside down

CONNOR BEASLEY cannot remember anything about the fall that left him fighting for his life in the Royal Stoke University Hospital last month, but recalling what happened when he woke up after emergency surgery on his skull is a different matter.

“I was shouting at them to let me out,” chuckles Beasley, whose world was literally turned upside down when his mount, Cumbrianna, clipped the heels of one of his rivals in a sprint race at Wolverhampton and came crashing to the ground. “I thought I was still at the racecourse.

“I knew I had three rides at Catterick the following day and five rides at Carlisle the day after that, and I was also meant to be riding out for Bryan Smart the next morning.

“I was saying, ‘I’ll be in all sorts of trouble if I’m not at his stable for first thing’. I couldn’t understand why my girlfriend was looking over at me and saying, ‘I don’t think you need to be worrying about that’.”

Instead, Beasley was forced to come to terms with an injury checklist that provides an uncomfortable reminder of the perils jockeys face on a daily basis. Falls in Flat racing might be much less common than in the National Hunt sphere, but their rarity, combined with the increased speed horses are racing at on the level, combine to make them potentially even more dangerous.

Beasley, a 20-year-old from Spennymoor who has spent the last couple of years carving out a reputation as one of the most highly-rated young riders in the country, suffered a fractured skull and spine in last month’s fall, along with extensive damage to his neck and ear.

He had a drip inserted into his skull to remove the bleeding, and plates installed to repair the internal damage. Plastic surgery helped repair his ear, although a degree of temporary deafness remains, and he will have to wear a full neck and head brace that effectively holds the upper half of his body bolt upright for the next three months.

Sitting in the living room at the Denton Hall stables of his main employer, Michael Dods, he is unable to turn his head in either direction, so his gaze is constantly straight ahead. As a metaphor for where he currently finds himself mentally, it is fitting.

“I have to look to the future now,” he says. “When it first happens, I suppose it’s only natural you wonder why it was you, but that quickly goes and you just have to forget about what’s happened and start looking towards getting yourself better.

“I’ve been lucky really. I know it looks bad and it’s going to be a while before I can get all of this off and start moving a lot more naturally again, but there’s no reason why I shouldn’t completely heal and eventually be as good as new.

“The surgery on my brain went well, and the doctors all say it was a really good sign that I was alert and talking pretty much straight away. Mending the neck and back is going to take a bit more time, and we’re going to have to see how well everything knits back together, but I’ve been going into James Cook (Hospital, in Middlesbrough) and things seem to be progressing as hoped.

“You never think something like this is going to happen to you. I’ve fallen off horses before – of course, I have – but you think you’re invincible and nothing can knock you back.

“Everything was going great guns for me. I rode out my claim last year, and had 29 winners this year, but then all of a sudden, I’m sitting there in a hospital bed and can’t move my body.

“It’s hard, but the doctors have told me there’s no reason why I can’t get back to racing and that was really the only thing I wanted to hear. The concussion means I’m not allowed anywhere near a horse for six months, but hopefully by the time I get to that stage, I won’t be too far away.”

To those on the outside of the racing fraternity, the desire to get straight back into a situation that proved so life-threatening seems illogical. Yet Beasley is hardly the first jockey to shrug off exceptionally serious injuries as merely par for the course.

Last month, Brian Toomey made a remarkable return to the saddle almost two years after he effectively died for six seconds following a fall at Perth.

Toomey was in a coma for more than a fortnight before embarking on a gruelling, but successful, road to recovery, and his experiences will serve as an inspiration to Beasley in the next few months.

“I know Brian fairly well,” he says. “I was obviously aware of everything he was going through, although it’s probably only now that you realise just how much of a battle it must have been for him to recover and start riding again.

“He was hurt much more seriously than I was – he was in a coma for I don’t know how many days – but he came back because it was his life and all he ever wanted to do.

“That’s the same for me, really. Racing is in my blood (both of his parents work for Tracy Waggott at her stables in Spennymoor), and all I’m really thinking about is when I can get back.”

For Beasley, the lure of a return to the saddle will provide inspiration during the next few challenging months. For those close to him, however, the prospect of him heading back out onto the racecourse is more difficult to digest.

His fiancee, Carla Dixon, spent 11 days living in hospital, and admits it will be hard to see him back on a horse. Ultimately, though, she accepts it is something she is going to have to get used to.

“It’s what he loves and I’d never want to stop him doing that,” she explains. “But I really don’t know how I’ll feel when he gets back riding and I’m still not really sure if I’ll want to watch him.

“I remember taking the calls saying he’d been hurt, and the journey down to Stoke was horrible because no one really knew how bad things were.

“It was hard seeing him lying in hospital, although the support we’ve had since then has been amazing. There wasn’t a single day when one of the jockeys wasn’t calling in to see how things were, and that definitely helps. I know he’ll be going back into a world where everyone wants to look out for him.”

That support has continued since his return to the North-East, with the owners at Dods’ County Durham yard setting up a crowd-funding page on fundraising site, Just Giving, to help supplement the income Beasley receives from the Injured Jockeys’ Fund.

The help is appreciated, along with the rehabilitative facilities that are on offer at the newly-opened Jack Berry House in Malton. Ultimately, though, Beasley wants just one thing.

“I just want to get back to where I was,” he says. “People say that you only really appreciate something when you don’t have it anymore, and it’s true.

“This is something I have to overcome and battle through, and I’ll do that. And when I do get back to riding, I’ll be doing everything I can to make sure I’m even better than I was before.”