It’s a horse trainer’s worst nightmare.
You’re watching your most promising young filly complete a routine piece of trackwork when things go wrong.
The horse spooks at a shadow, drops its rider, gets tangled in the loose reins, panics and proceeds to gallop on.
Whether they run for five seconds or five minutes is out of your control, as is whether they run through five fences or none.
Chris Bieg lived that nightmare at Morphettville back in April.
His emerging filly Teardrop Rotation had just defeated Party Crasher in The Shillabeer at Oakbank and looked one of the leading local hopes for the Listed Adelaide Guineas when disaster struck.
“We had her in the Guineas but she dropped the rider at trackwork on the Friday, got tangled up in the reins and went through about half a dozen fences,” Bieg said.
“Three out of four legs required surgery and the fourth needed stitches as well.”
“She did herself a mischief and it was pretty horrific because it was a combination of cuts from hitting the metal rail and friction burns from the reins getting caught.”
“Richard Jolly and I were sitting out in the middle and there was literally nothing we could do until the horse decided to stop.”
Teardrop Rotation’s injuries were visually horrific but Bieg said her bones and tendons were miraculously intact.
After a couple of surgeries and some extensive rehabilitation, the daughter of D’Argento will return to the races at Morphettville Parks on Saturday.
While her summer campaign is unlikely to include any ambitious assignments, Bieg is hoping it can lay the foundations for a tilt at some black-type mares races during next year’s Adelaide Autumn Racing Carnival.
Teardrop Rotation is $9.50 with Bet365 in Saturday’s BM74 Handicap over 1400m.
“She was very lucky not to do more damage,” he said.
“She spent a fair bit of time on box rest after a couple of surgeries, then plenty of time at Performance Park, doing a bit of pre-training while the wounds healed.”
“It was a bit touch and go whether we’d be able to save her but we did and she’s come to hand a lot quicker than what we expected.”
“She’ll definitely have a few runs this preparation and if she can continue to measure up and get her rating up, there are some nice mares races here in Adelaide during the autumn carnival.”
