Racing: Fall ends riding all-clear for Sheila Laxon

SYDNEY - Just days after getting the all-clear to ride horses again, Melbourne Cup winning trainer Sheila Laxon has had another setback.

Laxon was helping load horses on to a horse float at Seymour, Victoria, last week when she fell off the back of the truck, shattering an elbow.

"I started thinking someone is telling me something," Laxon told Melbourne's Herald-Sun newspaper.

"I just got the news I could ride again, then this happens."

Laxon, who shifted from Cambridge in New Zealand to Seymour last year to be with new partner John Symons, said she has to keep the elbow motionless for two weeks or risk having the joint removed to make way for an implant. That would leave her without much strength in the arm.

"It's quite nasty. I am an accident waiting to happen." Laxon, who trained Ethereal to win the Caulfield Cup-Melbourne Cup double in 2001, has suffered dreadful injuries in falls from horses over the years.

In 1991 she suffered head injuries and a broken leg when she fell during a race in Gisborne. She was unconscious for weeks and it took years for her to recuperate.

Then in late 2002, she was tossed from a horse at home and fractured a hip, broke six ribs, punctured a lung, cracked a vertebrae and damaged her liver and kidney.

Doctors said she would not ride again but a week ago received the all-clear after four operations in the past 14 months.

- NZPA