Veteran jockey Trudy Thornton, laid up in Auckland City Hospital with a smashed hip from a race fall, is not about to quit the sport.
"To hell with it," the 50-year-old said yesterday. "You might get to see someone killed walking across the road this afternoon."
The Waikato jockey says she will continue riding "unless I win Lotto" and rarely gives a thought to the dangers of her occupation.
Thornton, who has 930 career victories, broke her hip last Saturday. Surgeons have grafted bone on to the damage.
She says all jockeys occasionally think about danger. "But it's something you quickly put behind you. If you go out on to the racetrack with that in your thoughts, you shouldn't be there."