Shane Rose thought ‘mankini-gate’ was the drama of his year – until a 550kg horse crushed him

Shane Rose can’t describe what it feels like when a 550-kilogram horse falls on you and, in one crunching moment, breaks bones in 19 different places in your body.

He would if he could but, perhaps blessedly, that crunch is not a memory the Australian equestrian star can recall from a horror training fall on his property in March.

“I actually don’t remember anything, until I woke up from the surgery,” Rose said.

“But from that moment on, yeah, well it’s ... still not great.”

Rose, a three-time Olympic medallist in eventing, was schooling a young horse over some technical jumps at his property in Werombi, in south-west Sydney, when it clipped a hurdle. The 51-year-old landed first and the horse landed second, crushing Rose.

He was rushed to hospital and, along with a severe concussion, Rose had 19 separate fractures, including three in his elbow, four in his pelvis, six broken ribs and four near his spine. He also had surgery to insert a rod into his femur.

Australian Olympic equestrian star Shane Rose in hospital after fracturing his pelvis and multiple other bones.Credit: Instagram

Four months out from the Paris Olympics, the accident threw Rose’s ambitions of competing at a fourth Games into severe doubt. He is one of Australia’s leading riders and had already qualified for selection a few days earlier, but Rose was now flat on his back in a hospital bed. And suffering.

“Fortunately, I was only in pain for a few days, and when I say pain, significant pain,” Rose said. “I was in hospital for 10 days, but then I didn’t have any painkillers after I left hospital.”

Rose’s body was broken but his spirit wasn’t, and the mental calculations began about how many days remained to recover and earn Olympic selection in June. That evolved into a 100-day rehabilitation plan, and after a month of healing in a bed and a wheelchair, Rose moved to Canberra to begin treatment at the Australian Institute of Sport.

Over four weeks, physios and trainers helped Rose slowly regain the strength to walk and ride. Staff even bought a hobbyhorse head and taped it to the front of his exercise bike.

“I have always been very positive – there were only two or three moments in my rehab when I thought, ‘What if I don’t get better?’ ” Rose said.

“But they were pretty short-lived, and literally the next day I thought, ‘No, I have got this’.”

The problems arose when medical staff began to understand Rose’s pain threshhold doesn’t align with the average person. Or even the average athlete.

“They would say, ‘Go until [the pain level] is seven out of 10’. And I would go to what I consider seven out of 10 and they’re going, ‘Whoa, you can’t do that much,’ ” he said. “I am just like, ‘Well you said to go to seven, and I am not there yet’.

Shane Rose competing at the Rio Olympics in 2016.Credit: AP

“I guess I do have a pretty good pain tolerance. One time, I broke my leg and I didn’t know for a week, because I had done it in a stupid way and my wife was cranky with me. But once I found out, I figured, ‘Well it’s been a week already’, so I just kind of carried on and got on with life.”

Rose said he knew he had to be more cautious with this recovery, given a setback on the short runway might ruin his chance of making Paris. He limited himself to minor rebellions, like doing 15 push-ups when asked for 10 and then claiming to have lost count.

“I think it has surprised people around me that I have been quite disciplined,” Rose said.

Those who know Rose also say his single-minded recovery is no surprise, however. He has previously fought thyroid cancer and had multiple nasty falls; including one in 2006 which left him in a coma for a week and required major facial reconstruction.

But by the end of his time at the AIS, Rose was itching to, literally, get back on the horse. It was a moment of truth.

“The first time I sat in the saddle, I pretended it didn’t hurt,” Rose said.

“I remember walking him the first five metres thinking, ‘Wow, I don’t know if I can do this’. It was one of those moments when I thought, ‘Maybe this is just going be too hard’.

“But literally 10 minutes later, I felt 100 per cent. Then I was thinking to myself, ‘I don’t know if I want to trot because I don’t want it to be bad’. I wanted to know, but I didn’t want to know at the same time.

“But it was OK and we kept progressing, and pretty much I haven’t looked back from then. I have a bit of a limp, but riding, you wouldn’t know I’d had an accident. I feel 100 per cent on the horse.”

Shane Rose returns to competition in a dressage event in Melbourne on Saturday.Credit: Chris Hopkins

On Saturday, Rose returned to competition for the first time since his accident. It has been 85 days.

He competed in the dressage of the Melbourne international three-day event in Werribee, and he will back up in the showjumping on Monday. He is set to do some cross-country trialling in the next week or two to prove his fitness to the Equestrian Australia selectors, before they make a final call this month.

Pending those final tests, Rose is considered a strong chance to be named in the eventing team and take his long-time horse, 19-year-old Virgil, to Paris and go one better than the team’s silver medal in Tokyo.

It would be Rose’s fourth Olympics, but he was also ruled out of two Games after arriving – in 1996 and 2012 – due to injuries to his horses.

Shane Rose at the Melbourne international three-day event in Werribee on Saturday.Credit: Chris Hopkins

“No one is guaranteed of anything in this sport. This might be my last chance of going to an Olympic Games, so I am doing everything in my powers to be there, and to do as well as I can at this one,” Rose said.

For Rose, the nerve-shredding pressure of an Olympic Games might prove to be the most normal thing yet in a year that has crammed in lots of bizarre drama.

Just a few weeks before his accident, Rose faced the prospect of missing the Olympics after being stood down by EA for wearing a mankini in a fancy-dress showjumping event. It prompted a complaint from a member of the public, which launched an investigation and a week of worldwide media attention.

Rose laughed off the mankini scandal at the time (he was quickly cleared) and jokes the training accident was all an elaborate ruse to keep his profile up.

“I was losing a bit of media interest, so I figured I would just have a little setback,” Rose laughed.

“It [the mankini] was all a bit of fun. In hindsight, who could have imagined something like that would create the publicity it got? That was something in itself.

“But yeah, hopefully in Paris we will have some stories to write about the Aussie team winning medals. And not just me busting myself up or wearing silly costumes.”

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