Kembla preview: Grant Buckley returns from accident that nearly left him in a wheelchair permanently

Grant Buckley will have his first ride back almost eight months after a horse flipped on him, and reveals how close he came to being unable to walk again.

Bucko’s back.

Grant Buckley, racing’s “everywhere man”, will be on the road again and back in the saddle on Saturday almost eight months after he left Wyong racetrack in a helicopter.

“I got on a horse in the enclosure and just got my feet in the irons and it took two steps and just flipped straight over on top of me,’’ Buckley said.

Buckley was immediately attended to by the on-course paramedics who deemed his injuries serious enough for the jockey to be flown to hospital.

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“I fractured my pelvis, at the front and the back,’’ Buckley explained.

“The specialist, Dr Isaac, said to me ‘you’ve had that much force, that if the horse had landed on you a little higher on my belly, it would have snapped my backbone in half.

“He reckons I wouldn’t have walked again.’’

Buckley spent two weeks after the accident in hospital, during which time he was operated on twice.

“I was in a wheelchair for six weeks,’’ says Buckley.

“My best mate Tye Angland came in handy. He had everything organised for me before I got out of hospital.

“He had his wheelchair here so I could get straight into it. Their wheelchairs are a lot smaller than the hospital ones so it was really good of Tye to give me his second wheelchair.’’

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Buckley said he wouldn’t have been able to manage without the help of wife Chantelle, a former jockey herself, who nursed Bucko back to shape while juggling her commitments as a SKY Racing form expert.

“Chantelle virtually had to dress me, shower me and everything because I wasn’t allowed to weight-bear at all, Chantelle was just like my nurse,’’ Buckley said.

Despite the gravity of his injuries and the long absence from riding, retirement was never an option for the man who has ridden over 2500 winners and visited almost every racetrack in the state.

“I was actually starting to miss it,’’ Buckley said.

“It (retirement) never came across my mind. If I want to end it, I want to do it on my own terms not through injury.’’

Grant Buckley will ride at Kembla Grange on Saturday after eight months of recovery. Picture: Bradley Photos

With his saddle temporarily in storage, Buckley’s TV got a workout during his recovery, barely switching off one particular channel.

“I watched a lot of racing,’’ he said.

“And followed a lot of my mates and a few apprentices, I was always ringing them and they’d ring me because they knew I was on the sidelines. So it was good in that sense.’’

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Buckley’s weekend comeback is a welcome break from a spate of falls and incidents in recent weeks that has seen a handful of jockeys injured, none worse off than Blake Spriggs.

“Little Blakey, he’s a great little fella and it was a shame what happened but we all know the ins and the outs of racing. I’m just so happy that he is starting to get on the road to recovery which is a really good sign,’’ Buckley said.

Buckley’s comeback at Kembla comes almost 10 years to the day that he steered the Jeff Englebrecht-trained, Dr Ule Crosson-owned Lady Jivago to win the rich Inglis Classic at Rosehill.

He’ll have four rides at Kembla aiming to add to his track tally of 286 wins, including Puzzler for local trainer Mitchell Beer.

“I was actually down at the Kembla trials when it trialled and it looked like it trialled really nicely,’’ Buckley said.

Originally published as Kembla preview: Grant Buckley returns from accident that nearly left him in a wheelchair permanently