It happened quickly, it always does. One second they’re on the horse and before the next has clocked in, they’re on the floor. That’s how it goes when a jockey falls at speeds around 40mph.
Umberto Rispoli has had a few of those in his career, the latest during the Gulfstream Park Turf Sprint, race seven at the Florida track on January 24.
“When I fell off, when I was on the ground, I was actually good,” he told Idol Horse. “You know, sometimes you hit the ground and you have pain, you feel it and you know it, in the back or the leg or whatever, but this time, I didn’t.”
But any notion that he was going to walk away unscathed disappeared when he tried to move.
“I was about to stand up, and then when I put my hands down to stand up, I looked at my leg and it was displaced,” he continued. “So, the foot, it’s like, you know, a football injury, like the foot was on one side and the rest of the leg was on the other side. So that’s pretty much what it looked like.”
He was deep into the home run on Unconquerable Keen, racing with the John Velazquez-ridden My Boy Prince inside him, when Litigation came sweeping past his outside for victory. As the winner sped by, Rispoli sensed Velazquez moving from in to out; he recalled yelling and trying to evade, then Unconquerable Keen made contact with Litigation’s back-end; in a fraction of a second, the horse stumbled and his nose went down; Rispoli was pitched up the neck and out the side, his right leg taking the brunt of the impact.
His agent Matt Nakatani flew in before that day was done, and the next day posted a message to social media, revealing the California-based Italian had suffered fractures to his ankle, tibia and fibula, without disclosing further specifics. Rispoli also took to social channels on February 1, posting a quick video from his hospital bed to let anyone who was interested know a “second surgery” had gone well.
“So, the actual injury is a broken fibula, fractured malleolus (ankle bone) with a displacement, then a small fracture on the tibia,” he revealed to Idol Horse.
“Underneath the foot I have a kind of sheath that holds the foot to make sure the foot all stays in place like it should.
“Things have gone great, the surgeries went really, really, really well. The first thing they did when I got to the hospital was put my ankle straight, then they put in place an external fixator the day after and last Friday they put in a rod for the fibula and a couple of screws in the ankle.
“The fibula is going to come back easy,” he added.
Rispoli was sitting on his hospital bed as he spoke on the phone: he’d binge-watched two TV series, watched sports, and watched jockeys doing what he won’t be doing again for a little while yet. He’d been in the HCA Florida Aventura Hospital in Miami for 12 days and was eager for “tomorrow” to come.
“I’m being discharged, I’m going home tomorrow, so definitely being home is going to be better,” he said.
That would mean a flight to Los Angeles with his fractured and repaired leg and ankle in a protective boot. Repaired but not yet healed: that will take time and despite the remarkable healing powers he has displayed previously when his body has been battered and his bones cracked and broken, Rispoli, 37, was not putting a timeframe on this one.
“When you have these kinds of injuries, you know you’re going to be on the bench for a while, but I’m full of motivation,” he said. “I have a boot now that I have to carry with me for the next 10 days and after that I can start to walk, and I go from there. I’m going to go day by day, I’m going to work hard.”
He has made unnaturally quick comebacks in the past, but he pointed out that he is not in his 20s anymore; he is confident he will come back as strong as before, but doesn’t know if his body will be able to recover as quickly as it did when he suffered a couple of horror falls in Hong Kong.
Three weeks was his prediction when he snapped his right collarbone during a barrier trial fall at Sha Tin in March 2018: he was right. In fact, 23 days after the fall, a few days after his return, he was back among the winners.
But his most incredible comeback came after a shocking fall at Happy Valley on November 9, 2016. His mount, Mr Pele, was tripped on the home turn by a horse falling in front of him: Rispoli was flung to the ground and bounced up as high as his mount’s shoulder. He went to hospital that night, was discharged, but the pain was like being “hit by a bus,” so he went in again the next day for scans.
He had fractured the talus bone in his ankle, but the bigger issue was the damage he had done to his meniscus and knee ligaments, particularly the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). He said then that he would be back in two months: he was passed fit to ride again on January 12, less than nine weeks later.
“When you break your bones at 20, it’s different to when you break your bones at 37,” he said. “The body changes, but my mind hasn’t changed: I know I’m capable to come back quickly but I’m not going to force it or put a time on it, I’m not telling people I’ll be back in two months like before.
“It could be two months, three months or six months, who knows? I am going to take it day by day, so when I do come back, I want everything to be healed 100 percent, because I have to be in 100 percent top physical form to be back on the horse: I would not put myself in danger and I would not put my colleagues in danger, I respect them and I respect the owners and trainers too much to come back before I’m 100 percent.
“I will do physio every day, like I did when I injured my knee,” he added. “I know these types of injuries, I know that you need to work hard and that’s what I will do.”
With Nakatani there with him in Miami, Rispoli told his wife Kimberley there was no need to fly across the country with their two young sons to be with him: he knew he wouldn’t be in hospital for too long. But he did have a visit from Velazquez.
“I really appreciate that Johnny came to check on me the day after,” Rispoli said. “He stayed with me a little bit next to the bed and he apologised. And I get it, you know, I’m a person who thinks that what happened on the track stays on the track. I understand that even good jockeys can make mistakes. Johnny is a legend, but we’re all humans, and I know he didn’t do that on purpose.”
But for all Rispoli has no grievance with Velazquez, he was nonetheless surprised that there was no action from the stewards. As he saw it, Velazquez’s horse came out and that forced his own mount out and onto the hindquarters of the winner.
“If it wasn’t Johnny it could have been someone else, but whoever it was, I think maybe the stewards could have looked at it more,” he said. “And that’s no disrespect and definitely not any ill-will to Johnny, it’s no disrespect to anybody, it’s about the rules and that’s how I see the rules.”
With less than 24 hours until he was due to leave the hospital, Rispoli was looking forward to being back with his family. But he was keen to emphasise that the treatment he had received was “amazing”, from the surgeon, Dr. Andrew Hiller, from Dr. Azizi, from a trauma nurse, Ashley, who treated him on arrival and put his ankle back in place, and who along with nurse Agostina has made his unwanted stay comfortable and pleasant.
“They’ve been treating me really well,” he said. “They’ve been on me every 20 minutes or every half an hour to check if I need anything.
“I’ve become really famous in the hospital,” he laughed. “Everybody knows me. One of the nurses recognised me from the TV series, Race for the Crown.” But as he prepared to leave and fly home to his family and a period of hard rehabilitation, with those metal screws and a rod in place, would he get through airport security without setting off the alarms?
“I still have the one in my collarbone as well,” he said, “It’s not a problem, it’s titanium.” ∎
