“I broke every rib except for two, both lungs collapsed and filled with blood, I had a haemorrhaged liver, my kidneys shut down, I fractured my left forearm, dislocated my left elbow, and fractured my collarbone on the same side,” Spriggs tells this masthead.
“I also had a pretty bad concussion. I’ve since seen the neurologist, and I’ll go for scans in the next couple of months to see how I’m progressing.
Matthew Smith and his TJ Smith Stakes chance Headwall on Friday.Credit: Janie Barrett/SMH
“My memory still isn’t great, which is common with all the sedation I was on. I don’t remember anything from the fall, which is a good thing. I don’t remember being awake until after two weeks I was in hospital.
“When [partner] KC arrived at the hospital, the doctors told her to prepare for the worst. I have no memory of it, but I don’t know what it was like for her and my family to go through that.
“Once I started to stabilise, I caught pneumonia, and because my body was so weak, it knocked me around.
“As I’ve said to my mates, ‘it was the photo finish of a life, but I’ve got the bob in’.
‘I don’t remember anything from the fall, which is a good thing.’
Jockey Blake Spriggs on his fall at Moruya
“Nothing else matters now. When you think about getting beaten by a bob in races, it feels like nothing now.
“Even watching Headwall on Saturday, the competitor in me will be disappointed.
“But I think of the father in me, and to look at my son [Brooklyn], and see him look at me and be so happy, and to know he never realised how close he was to losing his father, that’s what makes me realise how lucky I am. We love racing, we live and breathe the sport, but I now realise it’s a job, and family is what means the most.
“I haven’t put a time period on a return. I have to let myself heal and see how the body feels before I mentally think about a return. The thing I have to also take into account is what I’ve already put my family through.”
Spriggs dropped to 44kg in hospital but is slowly regaining weight. He drove nine hours to his sister Dimitee’s wedding in country Coonamble on Friday as he wasn’t medically cleared to fly.
He and KC plan to pull into a pub on the way home on Saturday to watch Headwall, a horse he knew was special from one of the first times he hopped aboard. He would have gone to the track for the first time since his fall had he remained in Sydney.
“I would have been on him Saturday, I still speak to Reg every few days. He texted me on Thursday night, telling me all the owners were thinking of me,” Spriggs said.
“When he won early last preparation without me because they had to claim [with an apprentice], Reg called me within two minutes of the horse crossing the line, telling me it wasn’t the same because I wasn’t there. It meant a lot.
“The horse has always had an excellent ability to run good sectionals with ease. When Usain Bolt was at his best, he’d pull away from his rivals, but look like he was just jogging. That’s what it feels like on Headwall.
“I’m lucky to be involved with such a loyal group. That will be the hardest part. It’s not winning a group 1, it’s not the prize money, it’s not being part of that special story we had.
“Headwall caught the eye when fourth in the Oakleigh Plate, and was the one chasing Joliestar into second in the Newmarket.”
Headwall meets some of his rivals worse off at the weights because of the weight-for-age conditions, but Smith said: “It’s a bloody good race and good field. But I can’t have him any better. He’s cherry-ripe for the day, he looks good, he’s worked well, he’s ready to go. Whatever he does will be his best.
“Blake has had a great association with the owners and horse, he’s a champion bloke, and I’m just so happy he’s OK.”
