Irish apprentice jockey Sean Cleary died on Saturday, November 1, 2003 following a fall at Galway six days earlier in which he received serious head injuries. He was 22.
Athlone-born Sean had ridden a total of 14 winners. He’d first spent three years with Jim Bolger before joining Pat Flynn in County Waterford, where he’d been for the previous two seasons.
His biggest success came on November 10, 2002 when winning the November Handicap at Leopardstown on 20-1 shot Bubble N Squeak. Unfortunately, the horse was subsequently disqualified after a banned substance was found in a urine sample.
Sean’s claim had been reduced from 7lb to 5lb by the time he won a Ballinrobe sprint on Traverse on August 30, 2003. But tragedy was to follow two months later.
On Sunday, October 26 he was riding All Heart for Paddy Mullins in the seven-furlong Corrib Oil Auction Race at Galway when his mount clipped the heels of another runner and fell about half a mile from the finish.
He was first taken to Galway University Hospital, but was transferred by helicopter to the neuro-surgical department of the intensive care unit at the Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, where he remained in a coma. His condition deteriorated significantly the following Saturday night and the heart-breaking decision was taken to switch off the life support machine.
The following day’s meetings at Leopardstown and Clonmel were called off as a mark of respect.
During the week that Sean was battling for his life in Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital, down the road in the Rotunda Hospital, his long-term girlfriend Maggie Farrell gave birth on the Wednesday to a baby son, named Sean Thomas after his father.
Shortly before his death, Sean had lodged an application for planning permission to build a bungalow in Carlow, close to Maggie’s parents. Tragically, he never lived to see it built.
