Racing: Rider beats near-paralysis

About five months ago, Gemma Sliz was faced with learning how to walk. Today she resumes her career as a jockey.

Sliz, 23, came close to being paralysed when she fell in a race at Ruakaka on September 11. She fractured three vertebrae in her lower back and broke her right foot.

"One of the vertebrae that broke was close to the nerves to my feet," the Auckland Cup winner said yesterday.

"Any closer and I wouldn't have been able to walk again."

The situation was so delicate, Sliz was confined to lying on her back in hospital for more than six weeks.

"It was touch and go for the first few weeks. For six weeks I wasn't allowed to move at all.

"If I had to move it took three or four people to move me. I had to keep my spine in line."

After spending such a long time lying flat on her back, Sliz virtually forgot how to walk.

"I had to learn to walk again, which was probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life," said the former English rider who came to New Zealand seeking better opportunities.

"It's hard to imagine that you would ever have to learn to walk again.

"The first time I got up, all I could do was stand. I just didn't know how to walk. I basically had to learn how to put one foot in front of the other."

Sliz has one ride at today's Matamata meeting and said she was happy not to burden herself with too many rides early on.

"I just wanted to start with one or two, build up my confidence again and build up my fitness. It's been a long time - seven months."

Sliz's mount tomorrow is the Paul and Mike Moroney-trained Spanish Class in race nine.

Spanish Class is having her first start for nine months but Sliz is familiar with the horse.

In preparation for her comeback, Sliz, who rode Upsetthym to win the Auckland Cup last year, has been riding trackwork, riding at trials and working out at the gym.

She admits there will be a few nerves before the race.

"I will be a little bit nervous. But as soon as I am on the horse I'm pretty much all right."

* Jockey Mark Sweeney broke a leg at Cambridge trials yesterday.

"He's broken his leg in three places in the bottom part of his leg," his father-in-law, Graeme Sanders, said last night.

Sweeney was riding a horse trained by Sanders.

Sanders said the horse finished second in a trial but continued on an outward path past the post and crashed into the outside running rail.

- NZPA