A JOCKEY has revealed how she won £70,000 and the biggest race of her career – without realising she had a broken leg.
Top Australian apprentice Madison Lloyd scooped the whopping pay packet for connections of Frankie Pinot.
"Frankie Pinot bursts to the front…"
A superb performance from apprentice jockey Madison Lloyd as she steers Frankie Pinot to the 2022 Wangoom @mcevoymitchell pic.twitter.com/MrPUzFtb5j
— Racing.com (@Racing) May 4, 2022
The five-year-old gelding was victorious in a listed contest at the prestigious Warrnambool carnival Down Under.
But there was no Frankie Dettori-style flying dismount for Lloyd, and for good reason.
She revealed in the aftermath of her Wednesday victory that she beat everyone else despite riding with a broken leg.
Incredibly, while in pain, she had no idea she had actually broken her leg a few days prior in a gallops fall.
Lloyd was doing some trackwork last Friday when a horse got upset in the stalls.
The 21-year-old jockey leaped off but heard a pop sound when she hit the turf.
She explained to racenet.com.au: “My friend also had a fall from one of her horses.
“She was hurt but she’s one of my best mates so I told her I’d ride her last one for her.
“He was a quiet little two-year-old, he was just scared of people.
“Anyway, the boys grabbed him and went to put him into the barrier and he jumped away from them, but then he launched through the air.
“I was pulling on his mouth and I was going to flip him over and I let go and bailed, because I thought I‘d rather myself hit the ground rather than have a 500kg animal on top of me.
“I landed on my ankle sideways and I heard a pop when I hit the ground. I knew it wasn‘t my ankle or my knee. I was grabbing my leg where the break was.
“I couldn’t get up for five minutes and then they carried me off the track.”
She was back at work the next day but did get a check over from doctors, who suggested she go and get some scans.
Hard-as-nails Lloyd carried on, though, thinking it was a muscle injury.
It was not until the day after her big win she discovered she had a fractured fibula and will be in a moon boot for at least a month.
She said: “I’ve never broken a bone in my body before and I knew this was something different as the pain wasn’t getting better.
“They (the radiographers) reckon I’ve got a pretty high pain tolerance.
“They were pretty impressed with the way I walked in when they saw the X-rays!”
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