Star Brisbane apprentice Emily Lang is nursing sore ribs but has remarkably dodged serious injury after a young horse she was riding went through a fence on a jumpout morning last Friday.
Lang, who won last season’s Brisbane apprentice jockeys’ title and finished second to great mate Angela Jones in the senior title, sustained a tear to a rib cartilage.
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She missed her rides at Doomben on Saturday, but is hoping to resume race riding in the coming week.
It is a painful injury but there are no broken bones and it could have been a lot worse.
“I was taking a two-year-old colt down to the barriers at Eagle Farm and it started running towards the gap at the 1000m mark and I tried to slow it down,” Lang said.
“Then the horse saw the fence and it thought it was a show jumper.
“I had a couple of seconds to realise it was going to go through the fence and I thought ‘this is going to be bad’.
“It collected the fence with its front legs and I’ve gone through the fence as well, the left hand side of my body.”
Emily Lang (left) with Tony Gollan and Angela Jones after they won Brisbane premierships last season. Picture: Steve Pohlner.
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The horse escaped injury and Lang thought she might have too, continuing to ride at the jumpouts and also turning up to ride at track work on Saturday morning.
But after about four gallops on Saturday morning, she started feeling pain and went for scans on her ribs which showed the cartilage damage.
“The medical people said there’s nothing I can really do, just ice it up and have a quiet few days,” Lang said.
“It was a bit disappointing on Saturday to have to get off my rides, I’ve never had to get off rides before and I didn’t really even know how to do it.”