Trevor Whelan has undergone three operations in eight months after a fall at York in September broke his leg in three places, leaving the 37-year-old jockey facing an injury no rider has yet returned from. His latest surgery was to fuse his ankle.

Whelan said the race unfolded in a blur that felt slower than it was. Riding Tiger Bay, he was brought down when Almeraq, ridden by Jim Crowley, clipped heels near the three-furlong pole. Whelan said he remembered to slip his reins a little and sit back as he went down, and that his first reaction was relief that he was OK.

“It was like it was happening in slow motion, even though it was so quick,” he said of the fall, adding that he had thought Tiger Bay would take him through after he switched behind Crowley’s mount. “My horse likes to drop in. At the three [furlong] pole we were starting to pick up and I was looking to get a run. Jim was going well, so I just switched behind him because I knew he’d take me through. Then the gap closed on Jim and he went down, and I knew I was going down because I was too close to Jim to get away.”

The injury has forced Whelan into a spell of recovery that has tested him differently from earlier setbacks. He had previously been a jump jockey, but he said this one has been harder to absorb. “I had a few injuries before, and I struggled more than I have with this one,” he said. “Maybe because I’m older now, but first when I had the fall, it was so bad that my first thought was relief that I was OK.”

That reaction mattered in the weeks that followed. Whelan said he spent the first two months “in a bubble,” focused on the fact that he and others got out of the incident alive, even if his leg would take far longer to heal. “For the first two months, I was kind of in a bubble where I was just happy that we got out OK, bar my leg, and that’ll heal at some stage,” he said. He also questioned whether the ordeal helped him cope or made matters worse. “I don't know, did it help me or did it make my situation worse?”

The ankle fusion now leaves Whelan up against the kind of recovery line that has stopped others cold. No jockey has ever come back from that operation to date, and that is the obstacle at the center of his comeback. His fall at York, caused when Tiger Bay was brought down after Almeraq clipped heels, is now more than a racing incident; it is the moment that has put one rider’s future in the balance.