Gina Mangan on when she suffered a horrific injury on the gallops after riding out for her boss David Evans
๐ฃ๏ธ "It was a life-changing experience. I was riding a horse that didnโt want to leave the stable, it didn't want to trot up the track. It would always whip around, and then once in a full canter it would whip the other way.
"Dave's gallop is so steep, so you trot down it, around the barrel and you whizz up it, but on our way down he just charged into the back of another horse, who kicked him in the chest and he bolted.
"It's amazing how much goes through your head in a moment like that, even though I was probably hitting 40mph. There were stalls at the end of the gallop, then a ditch and the road, so I threw my left leg over his neck and popped off the side.
"I got knocked out and when I woke, I was face down in the sand, and I thought I was on my pillow and it was bright out and I'd slept in. I never sleep in. I was thinking, โWhat the hell's going on?โ Then I realised I was on the gallops and I looked down and then somehow managed to get my boots off, because my feet were facing the wrong way.
"I had two bilateral fracture dislocations; one was my heel bone and the other was my talus โ the bone your tibia and fibula sit on, that just went jigsaw. It was an hour and a half waiting for an ambulance, and by then the adrenaline had well and truly worn off and the pain kicked in. I felt every bump in the road on the way to A&E."
โญ๏ธ INTERVIEWS: Gina Mangan โญ๏ธ
๐ฃ๏ธ "Banned from the Derby, broken in a horror fall - but still going strong"
Catherine Macrae hears how Gina Mangan put controversy and serious injury behind her to carve out a successful career
Read with Racing Post ๐