Picture credit: Hattie Austin / focusonracing.com
Rachel Venniker had what she described as a “soft fall” on Friday on the sand at the starting stalls at Summerveld, but unfortunately her leg hit one of the curb stones that keeps the sand in from the side and snapped her tibia (shin bone).
Fortunately it is a clean break, which makes the prognosis a touch better.
However, she is provisionally out for six months, although the prognosis might shorten depending on how well the bone heals.
As it is a major bone in the leg rehabilitation will be required after the bone is mended.
She had an operation after the incident to insert a rod-like pin.
She said, “Thank goodness the surgeon who worked on me (Dr Michiel Ter Haar) is a sportsman himself, a very good cyclist, so he said he is going to make sure I come back ‘A’ ‘Ok’”.
Rachel is on crutches but times have changed since the old days of plaster of paris casts.
She said, “The rod-pin keeps the bone straight and I have a brace kind of thing on my foot in which the front bit is squidgy but the back part is hard in order to keep the foot at a 90 degree angle.
There is just soft bandage around the shin. He is more worried about keeping the flex in all my joints. He said when moving around I should just pop my toe on the floor, so I can get a little bit of weight bearing on it as this will help the blood flow around the injury. It is almost like a horse with an abscess, the more blood flow, the quicker the healing. But the main thing is this new methodology prevents the tendons from shortening. In the old days when they used to cast everyone, you take the cast off and you can’t straighten your leg!”
On the fall itself she said it was a fall of a magnitude one would normally just get up from straight away and walk away, but unfortunately she fell on to the supporting curb stones.
She said, “She gave like a little fly jump and then just sort of sidestepped a bit, so it was literally I just lost my balance and sort of flopped off. It was unlucky that I went a bit more to the side of the track than I should have and I must have fallen on that side. When you’re falling, you don’t really want to get underneath them, so I must have just shifted a bit more so that I didn’t get kicked or anything and just fell straight on to the stones.”
She is philosophical about the accident and said it was “just one of those things” and she will stay busy by helping out at the Roberts yard.
She said, “I actually popped in this morning, I got my mum to give me a lift on her way to work. I gave the horses some carrots. They were all very happy to see me. They were surprisingly not as afraid of my crutches as I thought they would be. In fact they loved them. I’ve got like a squidgy thing on the handle, so that my hands don’t get sore, and they all just wanted to put it in their mouths.”
However, she did lament some of the good rides she will be missing.
That includes Glastonbury, a classy Paul Matchett-trained Rafeef filly she was due to ride in the Gr 3 TAB Pretty Polly Stakes over 1100m at Turffontein Standside this Saturday.
The one she was most looking forward to riding again was the exciting Roberts-trained Fire Away colt Fortress Of Fire, who won his 1200m debut at Hollywoodbets Scottsville by 3,30 lengths in effortless fashion. He is running in the Gr 3 Tote Godolphin Barb Stakes over 1100m at Hollywoodbets Scottsville on Sunday.
Although, she will be disappointed to not be aboard she was glad to know Andrew Fortune had taken over the ride.
She felt his style in which he is not hard on a horse and uses the whip sparingly would suit Fortress Of Fire.
