A LUCKY ESCAPE
Flanagan fortunate with just a broken leg
IT could only happen to a jockey – who else would feel lucky to have only suffered a broken leg in a horrendous fall. This was the situation for top Wexford rider Sean Flanagan after he came down in a crashing fall on Icelip on the final day of the Tramore Festival meeting last Sunday week.
He will be out of action for at least six weeks, and will miss out on the Listowel Festival, but Flanagan felt it could have been so much worse such was the severity of the fall at the second last fence after which the horse rolled over on him.
‘Unfortunately, I have a small fracture at the top of my tibia on my left leg. After I came down the horse rolled over and landed on top of me. For the first few minutes I was in excruciating pain and thinking the worst, but that wore off and I actually walked away.
‘It looks like I will miss Listowel which is a pity, but I was very lucky really. The back protectors we are wearing now are really amazing. I am black and blue everywhere on my body apart from the parts covered by the back protectors.’
Sean is continuing his successful association as stable jockey to Noel Meade and has already racked up 20 winners in the first third and quietest part of the season, putting him in fourth place in the riders’ table at the time of the accident.
The man from Palace East, Clonroche, is one of the busiest riders on the Irish scene and his 200 rides this season have only been surpassed by Andrew Lynch. Sean began his career as an amateur rider and rode his first winner on the Eamonn Sheehy-trained Keevas Boy in a handicap chase at Down Royal in November 2006.
He turned professional in January of the 2007 and was off the mark in the paid ranks within a week when partnering Sheehy’s Merry Cowboy to win a handicap hurdle at Fairyhouse on January 21. After a quiet few years, when he was seriously considering his future in the game, things took a major turn for the better when he was appointed stable jockey to Noel Meade in mid-September of 2016 to replace the retiring Paul Carberry.
After more than ten years riding, his first Grade 1 success came when the Meade-trained Disko landed the Flogas Novice Chase at Leopardstown on February 12th, 2017, and a second Grade 1 success came his way when Meade’s Road To Respect won the Leopardstown Christmas Chase on December 28. He scored his first Grade 1 success in Britain when the Henry De Bromhead-trained Identity Thief won the Ryanair Stayers Hurdle at Aintree on April 4, this year.
Last season, his first full season as Meade’s number one, he had a best ever 59 winners from 519 rides, earning more than €1.2 million in total. This contrasts sharply with the 2013/14 season when he had only three winners from a miserly 117 rides.
I use these figures merely to illustrate how his tenacity and determination, and the lucky break of getting the Meade appointment, has turned everything around so dramatically for one of the most popular riders in the Irish National Hunt weigh-room. Best wishes to Sean for a speedy and uncomplicated recovery.
It has been a tough summer for the Wexford connected riders. JJ Slevin injured his shoulder in a fall at Galway on August 4 and is projected to return on September 10, while Robbie Power, son of Wexford parents Con Power and Margaret Latta, was out from June 15 to August 21, also with a shoulder injury.