Racing: Summer of Sam

By MIKE DILLON

Sam Spratt's neurologist has advised her not to go back to race riding.

It's clear he doesn't really know the 18-year-old Takanini apprentice, who set racing alight by riding 80 winners in her first real year on the track.

"No way," said the vivacious Spratt to any suggestion of quitting, despite the severe head injuries she suffered in a race fall at Trentham in January.

Spratt endured severe head trauma and a brain bleed when her mount, the hot favourite Dragon Tiger, jumped the inside running rail and landed on her during the early stages of a race.

She could have died or been permanently disabled.

Yet her desire to return to her cherished race riding from the Colin Jillings and Richard Yuill stable is not driven by blind ignorance or arrogance.

You need only minutes in her company to become aware of her supreme confidence and cheek - almost bulletproof gusto.

From the moment she could talk properly again after the accident, Spratt said she would be back riding.

Yesterday she admitted to having felt doubt during the past six months.

The will to return to the raceday saddle did not waver, but there were times when she doubted her physical ability to achieve it.

"Three months ago I started to think it was an impossible dream," she says.

"I couldn't last a whole day without having to sleep and I seemed to get stuck in that mode for a long time.

"I got very, very tired."

Spratt laughs at herself a lot. Even when she admits the whole of February this year could be lost to her memory forever.

"I certainly don't remember anything about the accident, I don't even remember mounting the horse or my riding instructions.

"And I couldn't tell you what Lower Hutt Hospital looks like, or the room I was in there.

"I used to do dumb things, like talk to myself. I would get out of the hospital bed to get dressed because I was telling myself I had to go to school.

"And when I was in Auckland Hospital I was convinced there was a McDonald's downstairs and I kept moaning about people not taking me there.

"Of course there was no McDonald's."

Eight weeks ago Spratt stopped needing a midday sleep and says that each week she feels stronger.

She left yesterday for an eight-day Gold Coast holiday, and after that she will return to trackwork riding at Takanini.

"I hope to be back raceday riding from August 1.

"The specialist recommended I start off again in late August, but I asked if I could begin on the first week of the season and he said okay."

Spratt says there will be no problem with nerves.

"I've been working around the ponies and eventing horses at the family farm in Hunua and there's no problem at all."

Through a combination of confidence and raw talent she improved dramatically in her first year of riding and her desire now is to maintain that progress.

"When they show my accident on television they show a few of my early wins and I can't believe how much I've improved since then."