Not many athletes laugh about it when describing their broken back.
But Shanae O’Meara does.
The feisty young jockey reckons a fractured T5 is just a minor nuisance in her fledgling career.
In context it probably is. After all, in a 2019 trackwork fall she received critical head injuries and at times doctors feared for her life.
She lost about three weeks of her life in a coma, and still remembers very little about a fall her master, Austy Coffey, has described as one of the worst he has seen in a lifetime of racing.
Just as she is a bit hazy about last week’s track fall when the two-year-old she was working stumbled and threw her.
“I really can’t remember what happened after that first stumble, but I must have somehow hit something hard because the bone that is fractured is located between my shoulder blades,” O’Meara said.
“When I got up I didn’t feel right, and it was hurting to breathe, but the horse had come back to me so I hopped in the saddle and walked her around and quickly realised I hadn’t just been winded, something was wrong,” she said.
“I said to myself ‘this is not good’.”
What is good is her ability to forget both accidents and how/what/why happened. There’s no doubt, she agreed, it helps her recovery to not know what had gone before.
But the fighter in O’Meara that got her through her first accident has her already pushing herself towards recovery from this latest setback.
Even though it still hurts to breathe, she convinced her specialist, Dr Gary Zimmerman, one of Australia’s premier sporting physicians and chief medical officer for Racing Victoria, she could at least start walking to try and keep in some shape.
“When we got back to the stables I sat down for half an hour but I just knew it wasn’t going to be good news and I was really having pain when breathing,” O’Meara said.
“And Austy came in very two minutes to check how I was going and I knew we would have to go to the hospital.”
Fellow jockey Harry Coffey’s wife Tayla drove her to Swan Hill hospital where O’Meara’s mother works as a nurse.
“When I rang mum to tell her what had happened, she was just on her way out the door to start work, so that was good timing.”
After a four-hour wait for assessment and X-rays, the bad news was confirmed – O’Meara’s back was broken.
A CT-scan gave a clearer picture of the damage, and the good news was her spinal cord had not been compromised and it was only the one vertebrae.
From there it was contact with her dedicated coach in Melbourne as part of Racing Victoria’s apprentice jockey program, and then Dr Zimmerman, who confirmed the diagnosis.
The injury is expected to keep her out of the saddle until June, although O’Meara, gasping slightly while walking and talking on the phone, conceded the works she dragged out of her medical team are still very short.
But as anyone who knows the jockey will agree, she knows how to tough things out – and push through the pain.
“The prognosis was up to 12 weeks, but I am hoping it comes good much sooner than that. But I will have to pass another CT, then Dr Zimmerman and then Racing Victoria. But the program RV has in place for the apprentices, and jockeys overall, is fantastic – they really do look after all of us so well,” she said.
“If I get all the medical OKs, I still need RV to sign it off and I will probably be restricted to trials and trackwork before I get the OK to start racing again,” she said, heading back off on her morning walk.
“I guess it’s just a part of the job, it’s what happens to jockeys from time to time.”
But for O’Meara, her two times have already been too many and she is determined to stop having these accidents.
“Yes, it might be part of the sport, but I hope this is my last one, that I have done my part in the injury department.”
