You have to be tough to be a jockey.
Not just physically, mentally as well.
Thank goodness promising Queensland-based apprentice Wendy Peel is.
Just hours after riding her first ever city winner, she was on the deck, in agony and in need of transportation to the hospital after a track work incident.
On Wednesday afternoon, she will undergo surgery on her smashed up hip.
“One day you can be on the biggest high, the next you can be lying flat on your back in hospital with a broken hip!
“And that’s what happened yesterday morning at jump outs! I’m going on for surgery at 4:30 this afternoon!,” she said.
Any fall which curtails your opportunity to ride and therefore work, is a pain in the arse for a rider….or in Wendy’s case hip, this time around.
But it’s doubly unfair as she spent the best part of last year out of the saddle after a terrible and debilitating fall at Tamworth in March.
Her motto: “Pain is temporary, but victory is forever,” which she borrowed from A.P. McCoy, is fitting as she once again rehabs herself back into shape.
Wendy featured a few weeks back on the John Tapp podcast because she rode at three different venues in the one day, landing a winner at Toowoomba that night in the last race!
She is a pretty determined rider too, shown by the fact that in the last five months she was prepared to travel tp Birdsville, Darwin, Broken Hill, Dubbo, Tamworth and now, last start, to Doomben last Saturday where she put on a 10 out of 10 performance to land the chocolates on Canapes – at just her second ever city ride.
We wish her a speedy recovery. She rides with a 3kg claim in the city and at the provincials and her determination to succeed must be rewarded in time.
