Out of sight. Out of mind.
That is the sometimes cruel reality for injured jockeys as the racing industry, as it has to, continues to go about its business while they remain sidelined with an unsure and uncomfortable future.
That can be a lonely and depressing place.
For some, it is a constant battle, as is proving to be the case with Jasmine Cornish.
For the 2020/21 Queensland Provincial Apprentice Jockey’s Premiership winner whose blossoming career in the saddle was cut down in an instant in a violent fall at Beaudesert trials back in early November 2022, which resulted in a broken back, amongst other injuries, the pain … and we are not talking a small ache here … she continually carries with her is only partially offset by her on-going hope that some doctor or some treatment will ultimately come to her aid, give her relief and start her moving back towards a possible semblance of normality.
But, as much as Cornish tries to stay positive and look ahead through the mist of pain and its restrictive impact, given the troubled path her body has followed over the past twenty months … with no resolution for the problem in sight … she is not naïve about the truth of her position with regard to a return to race riding.
“It doesn’t look good,” admitted Cornish. “The pain is still very bad. Nothing much has changed over the months. The pain is constant.
“I’m just going to keep trying to go to different pain specialists … as I have done. Maybe see if I can get a nerve block or something. I don’t know how dangerous that might be at my age. I’ll just have to consider and weigh up all of my options.
“After still having to deal with it now after all this time … without there being any real change for the better at all … it is just horrible. The pain is intense … it is burning and aching and pinching … all in my back, all of the time.
“Obviously, it is a long way to go to get back to riding … if that is even ever possible but, as unlikely as that might seem, I’m not calling time on that right now, because there is no clarity on what is going on with my back. Nobody has got any answers for me at all.”
“There is nothing much else to say. I just got to keep on going somehow.”
Cornish is just one of many, varied examples of what jockey’s might be sacrificing for the sport.
Some are worse off than Cornish … some better … but, while at work, all jockeys and trackwork riders are at risk in a profession that does not discriminate between which age group or what gender riders are injured … or the degree of injury … when an accident occurs.
It is fact we all profess to know … but one we would all do well to remember.
