The words tough and resilient seem hardly adequate in describing Brett Scott’s recovery from life-threatening head injuries to train the winner of one of the feature jumps races at last week’s Warrnambool carnival.
Scott defied everybody but himself with his latest comeback from serious injury. It’s not the first time the rugged former Kiwi jumps jockey has bounced back when others might have thought it was curtains for his career at least.
Now aged 50, he lost count long ago of the number of fractures he’s had to endure through a jumps career that saw him win just about every major jumps race in New Zealand and Australia. Teaming up with Hall of Fame trainer John Wheeler, they swept all before them on the local scene as well as taking that form to Australia with multiple wins at the Oakbank and Warrnambool festivals.
Before relocating to Victoria in the mid- 1990s, Scott dominated local jumpsriding ranks. In his final full season in New Zealand he rode 37 winners from 161 rides – an exceptional tally for someone confined to hurdle, steeplechase and highweight races.
Injury prevented Scott from riding the Wheeler-trained St Steven in his Nakayama Grand Jump win, but he made up for that with a hat-trick on the Eric Musgrove-trained Karasi in the lucrative Japanese race.
His lower back is held together by titanium rods and your eye needs to descend no further than his shoulders and collarbones to understand the hammering his body took during his riding career. A serious back injury in 2010 ended Scott’s time in the saddle, but with his wife Kylie he has forged a training career from their Mornington stable. A highlight earlier this season was winning the A$500,000 Ballarat Cup with the former Wheelertrained Irish Flame.
But the victory that brought the house down came on the middle day of last week’s Warrnambool carnival when The Statesman won the Galleywood Hurdle. Remarkably, given that only eight weeks earlier he had been in an induced coma with serious head injuries after being kicked by a horse and he had been out of hospital for less than a month, Scott made it to The Bool.
He was able to take up his normal position watching from the birdcage as young Englishman Will Gordon brought The Statesman with an inside run for a victory that even those amongst the beaten brigade applauded. For the man in the middle it was an occasion to savour.
“Yeah, it was great to make it across and be there,” Scott admitted when RaceForm caught up with him earlier this week. “We were confident he could be in it after that good second at Pakenham the start before. The punters didn’t like him, but that didn’t worry me, and Will did a good job.
“It was just a shame I couldn’t celebrate like I normally would. It was great to see everyone there and I left the celebrations to them, people like Wheels and everybody else who turns up at The Bool year after year. It was pretty tiring though with everyone wanting to congratulate me and I’ve got to look after myself, which meant heading home afterwards.”
Scott has no recall of the early March accident that tipped up his life as well as those closest to him, wife Kylie and young adult children Tylah and Ethan.
“It was tough on everyone, especially Kylie who has worked alongside me all these years; she had to take charge of everything. When I came round and the doctors starting running through things, they asked me what I remembered and I said we had won the Ballarat Cup two weeks ago, when in fact it had been six months.
“That’s the planet I was on then, but I’m coming along well. I was keen to get home and thankfully Kylie was keen to get me back too!
“I’m not allowed to drive and there’s no alcohol for 12 months, plus I’ve got to behave myself around the stables, but the main thing is I’m back on my feet.
“We’re grateful for that and for all the help we got when the accident happened. That’s what I love about the racing game – everybody chips in to help when they’re needed most.”
Ironically, the Galleywood is one of the few feature jumps races absent from Scott’s jockey CV, something that added to the occasion, along with the fact that he races The Statesman in partnership with Yu Long Investments.
“It really bugged me that the best I could do was a couple of seconds in the Galleywood, but this makes up for it. He’ll go to the Australian Hurdle on Sunday week at Sandown and judging by the way he’s come through Warrnambool, he’d have to be some chance again.”
