KEY POINTS:
Three times during the two years and 16 days since Mark Sweeney's sickening smash at the Cambridge trials, he thought his career in the saddle was over.
It's a measure of the bloke that none of us ever knew that.
Owners try to buy young horses with the
right mental attitude. The Mark Sweeney attitude.
Things might not be right inside, but to the world, life's a bunch of roses.
When Sweeney resumes his career at Tauranga today, the entire racing world will cheer him on.
The Te Awamutu horseman with the million-dollar smile and gentle, cheeky temperament could not possibly have an enemy.
Yesterday he revealed to the Weekend Herald how when things looked to be fine on the surface as he went through his long rehabilitation from shocking leg injuries, there were three very low periods he bore in silence.
"The first was when the surgeon discovered several months after the accident that I'd fractured a vertebra.
"Until then the medical advice had been: 'It's okay, we can fix this'.
"But a fractured vertebra is something different."
The second occasion was when a rod was removed from his bad leg and he refractured it soon after.
"Then a hole appeared in the tibia and wouldn't heal.
"At that time I thought it was all over.
"I felt fine and I felt fit, but things weren't going in the right direction."
A year later he resumes a career that has landed 640 winners with five mounts at Tauranga.
The thought that that might not happen was not so much about missing being part of horse racing, but what would he do for an income.
"It was very daunting thinking that at age 31 I had nothing to fall back on.
"Since I was at school I haven't known anything but horse racing.
"What was I going to do?
"Seriously, I believe apprentice schools should hammer that point to youngsters thinking about a riding career.
"Train in something else as well because even if you do make it in the riding field, your career is short anyway.
"Even at 45 or 50 you've still got a lot of years left in you - you can't just do nothing even if you have provided for yourself."
Sweeney may have been sweating that point a touch too much - he would always get a job in the television racing media.
In the early days of his rehab he was asked to take a spot as an expert comments person on the Saturday morning Trackside television show The First Call and became a sudden hit.
No one has been able to explain why, but many cannot take an above average personality through a television camera.
Sweeney can and his killer smile on the box would always be in demand.
"That's something I'd like to pursue if my riding finishes," he says.
Sweeney says he has done the groundwork for today, several months of riding trackwork interrupted only by six days to have a metal plate removed from his leg.
"I've been going to the gym every night and helping out a mate of mine who's a contractor.
"I had 13 rides at the local barrier trials yesterday [Thursday] and I feel fine."
Despite that level of commitment, he wanted to resume today with only two, possibly three, mounts from the stable of his wife, Debbie Sweeney, and her father, Graeme Sanders.
"I wasn't going to put my name down on the official nomination list, but the mother-in-law Gael said I should.
"As a result my great mate Jim Pender put me down for two of his and Colin Fache, another true blue, has got me on Kenadaad in the main race.
"And I've got two for Debbie and Graeme."
Sweeney doesn't often look over his shoulder, but took time yesterday to touch on the moment he says is his greatest in racing, when he won the Auckland Cup as an apprentice on Senator.
"Getting the drag on the horse in the Melbourne Cup when he ran fourth for Lance O'Sullivan was a blow at the time, but I understood it. It was the Melbourne Cup and every horse in it deserves the best rider it can have. I was only in my second or third year."
If win number 641 is on the board when Sweeney packs away his saddles tonight he will be delighted, but he says a win for him today isn't necessary to know how lucky he really is.
"I've got this great family around me and what a wonderful game the racing game is. It's a tough game, but when you're down and out, people rally together.
"You wouldn't believe the letters I've had from punters I don't know."
Suddenly Sweeney's whole outlook runs exactly parallel to the one we all thought was natural, but only the Waikato jockey knew wasn't.
"My daughter Michaela was born the same week as Debbie and Graeme won the Auckland Cup - it's already looking a much more positive year."
And there is another major plus - Sweeney is a Cantabrian by birth and cheering for the Crusaders deep in the Chiefs country can have its problems.
"I always said with the arrival of my first born I'd switch allegiance to the Chiefs - I'd change stripes. And I have. That should make life easier."
