It was frightening," Richard Hawkins says as he remembers how he needed to learn to walk and even talk again after he had suffered a terrible head injury while racing at Taunton in April 2011. The young jockey had been in a coma for three weeks and he was unable to speak for a month after "he regained consciousness. "Even when I started talking a little it was only single syllables. That's quite scary."
Hawkins shakes his head in the lounge at Oaksey House, the hugely impressive rehabilitation centre which cost the Injured Jockeys Fund £5m to build. "I'd get halfway through a sentence and come to a stop. I couldn't remember the next word. It would just be a simple word but I couldn't find it. That shows how far I've come because of this place."
The 24-year-old looks around the building that has helped him fit the shattered pieces of his life back together. "The Injured Jockeys Fund has been unbelievable – from helping with my mortgage when I needed it to even giving me a way to talk again. My speech wasn't great when I first walked through these doors but it's fine now. I took a massive jump a month ago when they arranged for me to see a brilliant speech-and-language therapist at the Hobbs neurological unit in Shepton Mallet. That's how it's been all the way through because one of the first things I remember after the coma was Lady Oaksey visiting me in hospital."
Her husband, John Oaksey, the former jockey and journalist who died last year, founded the Injured Jockeys Fund in 1964. While he did not live long enough to see the 50th anniversary of the IJF, which will be celebrated at every track across Britain next year, Oaksey witnessed the opening of the centre that carries his name in 2009. Offering accommodation, expert medical care and comprehensive rehabilitation facilities, Oaksey House also provides snapshots from racing's bloodied history of bad falls and broken bones.
Hawkins can now climb the stairs to the first floor where a wall of archival photographs proves how jump jockeys have always confronted injury with mordant wit. Below a black-and-white snap of a jockey lying on a stretcher, covered by a blanket while his fag-holding hand brings a small bottle to his lips, the caption reads: "Aubrey Brabazon receiving medical attention of a swig of brandy and a cigarette after falling at Becher's Brook on Luna Casca in the Grand National. 1947."
The meticulous care provided to jockeys today results from 50 years of fund-raising after Oaksey and other passionate racing people responded to the paralysis of two riders, Paddy Farrell and Tim Brookshaw, who fell in the 1964 Grand National. They founded the IJF – which has become a salvation for hurt jockeys across the country.
Reflecting on his accident, Hawkins remembers that, "It was a lovely day in Taunton and because we'd had a really dry spring the ground was very quick. It was so firm the clerk of the course had been thinking of calling it off. I was on a horse called Tiger Dream in a selling handicap hurdle. I'd finished second on him the time before at Hereford and he only got beat because he's a bit of a thinker.
"I've watched the video a lot. Everyone, especially mum and dad, said: 'You shouldn't be in a rush to see it.' But I wanted to find out what had happened. The horse was going to the fourth-last hurdle and he usually jumped like a gem. But he reached for the hurdle and came up a stride too soon – so he was landing rather than taking off. When the hurdle took out his front legs and he somersaulted, he pile-drived me head first into the ground. It was bad luck – I was lying second because I got kicked by four horses. That's why I had a bleed at the back of my brain. I've been living with the consequences ever since."
Hawkins is improving at such a rate that he is studying to become an accountant. He will also marry his long-term girlfriend Lucy next year and the transformation has been startling. Yet the small steps he needs to take every day are painfully visible as I follow Hawkins into one of his rehabilitation sessions with Helen Hillsdon, a physiotherapist at Hobbs, the neurological specialists hired by the IJF to help jockeys with head and spinal injuries.
Hillsdon gently puts Hawkins through a series of testing but ultimately restorative exercises designed to gradually unclaw the toes in his right foot. As the right side of his body was paralysed it requires concentration and effort for Hawkins to complete the routines. "You see progress all the time with Richard," Hillsdon says later. "He has less pain and the toe-clawing is easing which, in turn, enhances his balance. He's also lucky with his speech – at least in the sense that when it occasionally becomes less fluent he can monitor it. He communicates very well and it's heartening he's chosen a profession in accountancy that, six months ago, he would not have considered possible. He's got a bright future."
A more illustrious jockey in the wise-cracking form of Andrew Thornton arrives at Oaksey House as everyone else settles down for Christmas lunch. Thornton has won the Gold Cup and the King George but the 41-year-old also cackles darkly when confirming that he has had 16 operations. "That's the norm," he says with a shrug. "I've ridden with compressed fractures of vertebrae, which is absolute nuts. It's little wonder I've got the numbers of four different surgeons on my phone. If I break my collarbone I don't bother with an x-ray. I go home and call the surgeon in the morning."
Thornton laughs defiantly at the bone-crunching reality. "That's why surgeons love jockeys. We're good business. People ask: 'What are you looking forward to when you retire?' I always say: 'Arthritis!'"
His swollen thumbs are a sight when he waggles them painfully. "We're like morticians or pathologists," Thornton says, "because we have a completely macabre sense of humour."
Yet Thornton highlights the work done by the IJF in helping the most seriously injured riders – from Hawkins to the Irish jockey JT McNamara whose fall at this year's Cheltenham Festival left him paralysed. The origins of this visit to Oaksey House stem from my interview with AP McCoy on the day after his 4000th winner – when the champion jockey was determined to highlight the work of the IJF and pay tribute to McNamara's courage. McCoy also revealed that, before reaching his historic landmark, it had meant much to him that he had visited McNamara on successive weekends. His relief in recounting that McNamara was finally spending time off the ventilator was another sign of the compassionate camaraderie underpinning the weighing-room's deadpan humour.
"AP visiting JT is the hardest thing for a jump jockey to do," Thornton says. "We feel such empathy for John Thomas because it could happen to any one of us. It's humbling in many respects because it puts your achievements into complete insignificance. But when you're at the bedside of a jockey who has been so badly injured it's also tough because it makes you admit the dangers. We don't like to think about it because the jockey's mindset is to pretend it won't ever happen to him. We can joke about broken bones, lost teeth, split heads but we don't like to talk about the reality JT is facing. At the same time we are so grateful the IJF is there to help JT and every one of us."
Next year the IJF will open a second rehabilitation centre in North Yorkshire – which will be much more accessible to McNamara and other riders from Ireland, Scotland and the north of England. "It took me six-and-a-half hours to get to Oaksey House," says Gary Rutherford, the Scottish jockey who dislocated and fractured his hip at Cartmel in July. "Once the new centre opens I'll be able to get there from the Scottish borders in two-and-a-half hours. I obviously hope I won't need the rehab I'm getting here but it'll be good to use their gym and get free physio."
Rutherford is philosophical about the injury that has shrouded the last six months of his life. "I'd ridden more winners at Cartmel than anywhere and my horse Raifteiri was jumping well. It was just one of those things. I passed out and was taken by air-ambulance to Preston. I was in agony when I came round and had two operations – one to put the hip back in place and then, after four days of hell in traction, I had the hip-socket plated.
"The first time I came to Oaksey I had to be driven down. But the rehab has been so good that, this time, I'm off the crutches and I drove down myself. I even got on a horse for the first time since July – when I rode out last week at a nearby yard. I was a wee bit nervous but I've been riding out every day since and I'm getting stronger. It's been tough for my whole family, and my girlfriend Sam, but I hope to race again in February."
Rutherford sinks back into his chair at Oaksey House with wonder etched across his face. "This place is a God-send," he says simply. "Every jockey knows it."
For more information or to make a donation to the Injured Jockeys Fund visit www.injuredjockeys.co.uk
The above was taken from an article in the Daily Telegraph.