Bright, Jonjo

On March 2, 2013, 19 year old Jonjo Bright - with his father, John - left their farm yard at Co Antrim and headed to the point-to-point meeting at Tyrella, close to the Co Down coast.

Born on December 19th, 1993, Jonjo, a promising rider, didn't have a ride at the meeting but hoped to pick up a spare mount in a race scheduled for novice jockeys.

Unquestionably, Jonjo lived for horses. 

'Riding in point-to-points, for people you don't know and getting a leg-up on a horse you've never sat on is what I dreamt about as a youngster' he said at the time.

Arriving at the course, his luck seemed to be in. Connor McGuinness had been booked to ride Cally Bridge in the novice race but, at the last moment, switched to Bettys Rascal, thinking it would be better suited to the rock hard going.

Seemingly, Jonjo was in the right place at the right time.  Shortly before the race, trainer Bernard Caldwell asked Jonjo - who he had never met before - to take the ride.

Though Jonjo, in around 40 races, had yet to ride a winner, he'd come second a few times. He clambered aboard, hoping for he best.

On dangerously fast going and jumping fences which had been recently rebirched, it was not an ideal environment for novice horses. Coming to he third fence on the second circuit, Jonjo knew he was in trouble.

He could tell his mount was totally wrong in its approach: Jonjo's father saw his son take a crashing fall and raced to the fence.

Jonjo said later 'the horse never made its mind up whether to take off long or take another stride and go in close. It then happened very, very fast.'

The young jockey was immediately in trouble with his breathing and thought he'd punctured a lung. Then came the awful realisation: he couldn't move. He told his father so.

'It's okay, son - your body is in shock.'

'No, Dad.'

In that moment, Jonjo knew what had happened.

'That was a horrible feeling,' he said later. 'The next two hours were the hardest part. You haven't had any preparation for it: one, two, three, it's happened. Your life has changed. Twenty minutes before you'd walked into the parade ring. Now this. I was never expecting good news.'

Jonjo had dislocated his C3 & C4 vertebrae, the disc between them demolished. He was rushed to he Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast where, that evening, Niall Eames, a trauma and orthopaedic surgeon, operated on him. Mum & Dad - Jayne & John - remained at his bedside.

At 4 a.m. they knew the worse. Eames informed them that, though the operation had been a success, Jonjo was paralysed from the neck down and that there would be no recovery.

But Eames had done excellent work on the stricken teenager: Jonjo was transferred to a rehab unit at Musgrave Park hospital some three weeks later where the physio said she had never seen a C3/C4 where everything had been done so well.

For Jayne and John, it was the first glimmer of hope.

Jonjo knew he had to be fair to Reah Magee, his girlfriend of  four years. He told her to move on with her life and not to worry about him. She bluntly refused and, one year on from his accident, they were still together. She put electric stimulators on his legs while they watched television together in the evenings.

Jonjo is blessed with not just an incredibly loyal and loving partner, but also a positivity rarely seen in one so injured.

'I knew for sure the situation I was in and it was either lie down and give up or try your best,' he recalled. 'I've always been the type to see light at the end of the tunnel.'

Some tunnel - yet he coped magnificently.

John's admiration for is son's fight back and refusal to lie down is apparent: 'I was always proud of him' he says, 'but unbelievably so since the accident.'

Jonjo concedes that the farm has been a lifesaver but 'the biggest thing for me is to stay physically strong and positive.

'Since my accident no sport could have treated me better than racing. The Irish Turf Club and lots of ordinary people have really looked after me.'

SEE JONJO INTERVIEWED BACK HOME: PRESS HERE