Jockey to quit at 25 after fall sparked PTSD flashbacks
A ROYAL Ascot winning jockey has told how he had to retire at the age of 25 after suffering post traumatic stress disorder following a heavy fall.
George Chaloner had just returned from injury when his horse, Woodacre, fractured a leg and he was thrown to the ground, breaking a vertebra and his foot. Doctors told him he was “half a centimetre from being paralysed”.
He now suffers flashbacks and says that he will never ride again. He cannot remember getting on the horse or riding the race, saying: “All I remember is horses going over the top of me and then waking up in hospital.”
Mr Chaloner, who won a race at Royal Ascot, then the Northumberland Plate at Newcastle in just one week in 2014, had got back in the saddle for the race in Newcastle in February last year after three months of rehab from a fall in Wolverhampton.
He told the BBC: “It started when I was in hospital in Newcastle. I’d be falling asleep and then all of a sudden I just remember falling off the horse, hitting the deck and waking up… suddenly I’d be wide awake and wouldn’t know where I was.”
It continued for just six months, and eventually Mr Chaloner was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is rare in his sport.
Mr Chaloner, who hails from a wellknown racing family, said: “I have ended up having to retire at 25. I have a plate in my ankle, both feet have got metal work in, my shoulder has got metal work in, I have 27 screws in me.”
While most commonly associated with soldiers, PTSD can affect anyone who experiences a trauma, with NHS research suggesting that it is around one in 20 people.
Paul Struthers, chief executive of the Professional Jockeys Association (PJA), said that he was only aware of one other case of a jockey suffering with PTSD: “The historic term of ‘your bottle is gone’ is very different to PTSD, which is a very specific condition which prompts a physical response, but there may have been people in the past whose bottle had gone who may have been suffering with PTSD.”
Mr Chaloner now works on the management team at Pontefract Racecourse in West Yorkshire.