When Dwayne Dunn was stretchered out of Happy Valley after a race crash in March, the doctors found a crushed vertebra and suggested a healing period of up to four months. What they could not diagnose was the broken spirit that came later - and there was a time when Dunn thought that might never mend.
'That was the worst fall I've had and I wasn't good,' Dunn recalls. 'I contemplated giving racing away. I had no desire at all to ride again. In the past, when I was away from racing, I'd miss it. I'd watch the television, read the results and always be saying, 'I could have ridden that'. This time I didn't miss it at all.'
The Australian is now sitting comfortably in the top 10 in Hong Kong and it's hard to imagine he might have turned his bruised back on it all. 'I didn't know what I was going to do and my wife and my family just left it up to me,' he says. 'It got to the stage where I was fit enough to come back to riding, and the Adelaide title was still a chance. So I went and rode work for a week, but just one or two a morning. I had no enthusiasm for it.'
As much by force of habit as any need, Dunn was hoisted back into race riding on June 2, and his first success really turned him around. 'I rode a winner for my father, Barry. In my life, I've probably only ridden five or six winners for him but that one was something special,' he said. 'I had seen how quickly other people forgot about you. Winning for Dad just kicked me back into the right frame of mind and gave me the drive again.' Drive enough for three that afternoon and drive enough to take his third Adelaide title despite missing more than three months of the season.
Dunn, 28, and married with two young children, grew up around horses on Kangaroo Island, 200 kilometres from the nearest population centre, Adelaide, and not exactly in racing's fast lane. 'They have three race meetings a year there,' Dunn says. 'My father was involved in breeding racehorses and was always standing a stallion for an owner in Adelaide. He'd usually have one or two he would train for the race meetings. I did all the things like show horses and hunt clubs. I was also playing Australian football but it reached a point where I had to make a decision which way to go.'
The decision was tough, since his mates kept on with school and football, but a trip to Adelaide made up Dunn's mind. 'I went to the races with Dad and I loved it. I said 'this is for me', left school at 15 and moved to Adelaide,' Dunn said. There he was apprenticed to John Hall, formerly an assistant trainer with Bart Cummings in the 1960s when the legendary trainer began his series of Melbourne Cup and feature wins.
Dunn's first ride was on the dirt track at Ceduna - probably twice as far from Adelaide as Kangaroo Island - and all he remembers is finishing third. 'It took me 73 rides to get a winner at a small meeting at Gawler, I didn't exactly click instantly,' he says.
