Nolen Gets Back On The Horse
The Age
Tuesday August 19, 2008
The jockey is fully recovered from a horror fall, Stephen Howell writes.
LAST August, Luke Nolen was gearing up for the ride of his life on El Segundo in the Cox Plate, trainer Colin Little giving him the prized opportunity despite 22 jockeys ringing for the mount. This August, Nolen is simply gearing up to ride - starting with Macau Causeway at Sandown tomorrow - having made a remarkable comeback in body and mind from a fall that left him bloodied and unconscious on the Doomben turf on May 17.Nolen's wife of four months, Alicia, flew from Melbourne to Brisbane that Saturday night fearing the worst, but an amazing recovery began with surgeons putting plates and wires in his face to repair breaks to the palate, eye socket, cheekbone, nose and jaw.Three months later, Nolen's face is as good as new and the other injury from the fall, a knee ligament, has mended with rest. His biggest supporter, trainer Peter Moody, has found a "sit-and-steer job" for his stable jockey to come back to race riding - Macau Causeway, a winner over the distance and on a wet track, will jump from barrier one in the Fairyhouse Handicap (1600 metres). With 58 kilograms, the rider should be comfortable in the saddle."I was walking around at 57 this morning," Nolen, 28, said yesterday in between six trial rides at Geelong.With falls such as Nolen had from the Bart Cummings-trained Antidotes, there is no automatic antidote to getting over any fear factor. But Nolen seems to have escaped unscathed mentally and has got back on the horse sooner rather than later."I don't know anything else. I had to get back on," was his way of talking down any comeback concerns."I rode some of the old man's for a couple of days on the farm at Benalla," he said of working horses for his father, Tal Nolen. "Then I went back to Moody's (at Caulfield), it'll be three weeks this Thursday."Nolen said his face was 100%, although he lacks full feeling in one side. He expects this to return."I gave her (Alicia) a bit of a fright," he said of his accident. "But after I've been home 12 weeks, she's had enough of me."Tomorrow's ride "just bobbed up" after Nolen had hoped to return in the country last weekend, a plan foiled when Moody didn't have a runner in his weight range."Play it by ear," is the jockey's response to the settling-in process, but he expects to have a couple of rides at Geelong on Friday and is likely to be on Miss Judgement in the McEwen Stakes, the main race at Moonee Valley on Saturday. "I'll just be sliding back into it nice and easy," he said.Nolen has group 1 wins for Cummings (Wonderful World in the 2006 Caulfield Guineas) and Little (El Segundo in last year's weight-for-age championship), but his fall possibly cost him two elite results for Moody because he was down to ride Riva San in the Queensland Oaks and Derby, which she won for fill-ins Scott Seamer and Jim Byrne."I've got me hand up," he said when asked if he would get back on for the mare's Caulfield Cup campaign.While Nolen remembers nothing of the fall, he has watched the video."It doesn't worry me, it happened," he said. "I looked to see if there was a run there - there was, it just closed up."Moody is a man with as few frills as Nolen has, and the rider said his boss stopped feeling sorry for him when he saw him with a stubby a few days after getting out of hospital in Queensland. The trainer is pleased with Nolen's progress, although the rider said yesterday's trials tested his fitness."I've pulled up good," he said.Boxing has been one of the ways back - only hitting gloves and the bag, of course, because he doesn't want another smack in the face.Nolen's fall cost him a fair part of last season, but he still finished ninth on the Victorian metropolitan list with 36 winners and ninth statewide with 88. He rode 100-plus in three of the previous four seasons."The last couple of springs have been good to me, but you're only as good as your last ride," he said. "And I fell off mine."
© 2008 The Age
