KEY POINTS:
Buddy Lammas next week emerges from two-and-a-half years of virtual wilderness.
The once champion New Zealand apprentice has not ridden for a year and before that spent a year and a half struggling with a damaged shoulder.
Lammas begins riding at Hastings next Thursday after a complete shoulder re-construction.
He looked to be on track to be at least as good as his older brother, successful jockey Cameron soon after he too joined the stable of Jim Gibbs.
He quickly shot up to 60-plus winners and represented New Zealand in the international apprentice jockeys' championship in Dubai.
But what looked to be a routine fall in a barrier trial at Te Awamutu before leaving for Dubai was to have very serious repercussions.
"The horse in front of me fell and we went over the top of him and I landed with my arms outstretched in front of me," said Lammas as he prepared for his comeback.
The shoulder he dislocated in the incident was quickly back in place and there was no real indication at that point that the ligaments and tendons had been too badly damaged to fully sustain a riding career.
"I was fine for six months - even in Dubai - then at Ruakaka one day I switched the whip to the left hand, went to give the horse a crack and my shoulder dislocated." An operation followed and Lammas rode for four months without too much difficulty, but when the shoulder dislocated during a race in the first week in February last year, he knew he had a serious problem.
The time for patch-up surgery had gone and this time reconstruction was the answer.
"They chopped some bone off at the back of my shoulder with some muscle still connected and stretched the muscle right around my shoulder.
"The surgeons told me the entire shoulder would be much stronger this time around."
Lammas said he could feel the difference from the first moment he climbed back on a horse and said he was supremely confident of a successful comeback after six rides at last Wednesday's Levin jumpouts.
With Jim Gibbs retiring at the end of the current season, Lammas has transferred to the Otaki stable of Howie and Lorraine Mathews.
He was due to end his apprenticeship in April, but the 18 months he missed through injury has been tacked on to the indenture.
Howie Mathews said he was greatly impressed with the vigour Lammas was able to produce at the jumpouts.
Lammas has 17 wins to go to lose his 1kg apprentice allowance and will make the most of that benefit while re-establishing himself.
"I only want two or three rides on Thursday to ease myself back in and I'll have maybe four or five on the group one day at Otaki on Friday," he said.
Lammas, a natural lightweight, will ride at 54.5kg next week and says it will take him three to four weeks to drop back to his natural weight of 51.5kg.
The 20-year-old is a go-getter and says he hasn't been watching too much racing on television in the past year because of frustration.
"You see the horses you used to ride and you miss it.
"Then you see a rider slaughter one and it makes you want to be there even more."
He says Vinaka is the best horse he's ridden.
He was on the brilliant sprinter in the group one Railway Handicap, but unfortunately not the year Vinaka won it under Lance O'Sullivan.
"Deluge, the horse I won one of the apprentices races in Dubai on was pretty good."
