Painful wait nearly over for Coetzee
MOST people will go from cradle to grave without knowing the true meaning of despair, a numbing experience when life seems suddenly to lose its purpose. For former South African champion jockey Felix Coetzee, that moment came nine slow, painful months after he had fractured a leg in a riding accident at Pietermaritzburg.
Doctors had inserted a pin that ran from his knee to his ankle - a stronger version still does - and he was making yet another trek to the surgery to find out when, or might it be if, he would ride again. The surgeon looked at Coetzee, shook his head and said: 'It hasn't joined. The leg is still in two pieces, we'll have to do it again.' For Coetzee, stable jockey to the remarkable Brian Kan Ping-chee who has stood by him for 14 wasted months, it was almost the end.
'I just felt so totally helpless. Here I was, nine months on and there was not only no sign of me getting back to racing, there was every possibility that I would not be riding again. 'I thought, what am I going to do? When will this ever end? There are low points in everybody's life but I could never go through that again,' says Coetzee, who resumes a Hong Kong career next Sunday that virtually everyone with an interest in the sport here thought had ended months ago.
Coetzee, who had a stronger pin and several screws inserted in the bone, was determined to return and the first, crucial part of his comeback was completed when he landed here last week in the wake of Typhoon Kent. Cleared by a Jockey Club medical, he was quickly reunited with former champion trainer Kan and rode at the Sha Tin track for the first time in 16 months yesterday morning . . . and felt 100 per cent after it was over.
The nightmare has ended but only Coetzee himself knows how desperate it really was. 'What I remember vividly was simply wondering when I would ride a winner again. Not just when I might be on a horse but when would I be on a winner - where would it come from, what colour would the horse be, who would the trainer be? 'You cannot allow yourself to think that it is all over and I don't believe, even at the very worst time, that I gave up on myself.' Coetzee, who has a great relationship with the colourful Kan, still believes some good came out of his 14 months away from the game he loves. 'I was helped by some wonderful people and very seldom do you get that kind of unflinching support in this life - and not very often in racing. 'I can only say that Brian Kan is an amazing man.
'Who else would have stuck by me when there was no guarantee that I would ever be back?'