• JT McNamara paralysed by Cheltenham Festival fall
Approaching the second anniversary of the catastrophic Cheltenham Festival fall that left him paralysed, the Irish jockey John Thomas McNamara, along with his wife Caroline, recently granted an audience to the Racing Post. Alastair Down was the man tasked with asking the questions, a job the hard-bitten graduate from journalism’s old school admitted filled him with trepidation. Down described “the palpable air of apprehension as I walk in to see a figure venerated in the weighing room as a horseman who was as good as, or better than, 99% of jockeys who ever rode”. The picture so skilfully painted after his visit to Limerick was one of a husband and wife at something approaching peace with the savage hand dealt to them in March 2013.
With the help of his formidably capable wife and three young children, among many others, the man known to all as “JT” seems to approach the terrifying ordeal visited on him with the same courage and enthusiasm with which he participated in the sport that has left him unable to move from the neck down. His only grumbles? Frustration he is unable to play with his children, contempt for the treatment he received on the Dublin leg of a 15-month rehabilitation tour and good-humoured irritation with the apparently myriad mechanical shortcomings of the wheelchair that offers him some little independence.
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source Sport | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1ArDy1j
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