Neil Callan has emerged from Sunday's sickening three-rider fall at Sha Tin with soft tissue damage, but is hopeful he will be able to take his place on mounts at Happy Valley tomorrow night.
Callan looked the worst sufferer when his mount, Collagen, snapped his left front leg at the 300-metre mark to start a chain reaction that brought down Lean Journey and Zac Purton, while Howard Cheng Yue-tin was unseated from Ting Ka Palace.
Cheng was back riding yesterday and Purton, who is suspended, will test a sore ankle at today's trials, while Callan is working on getting himself right for the Valley. Stand-by riders have been nominated for Wednesday.
"I'm not bad. My right foot is still swollen but I've been to a specialist and he said it's only soft tissue damage," Callan said yesterday. "He's told me to keep it iced, keep it elevated and take some anti-inflammatories and I might be okay to ride on Wednesday. I won't know for sure until mid-Tuesday but I'm trying my best."
Callan said the fall happened without any warning sign and sheer good luck saw him come out of it almost unscathed.
"I was lucky. If you look at the replay, Zac's horse clips my horse's legs and falls to the left because of that. If he hadn't gone left, if he'd fallen straight ahead, he'd have come down right on top of us," Callan said.
"Normally, if a horse is about to break down like that you can feel their action go short a stride or two before and prepare yourself as much as you can, but Collagen just suddenly disappeared from under me."
Purton, too, was at the specialist with pain in his right ankle.
"Walking around normally, there's no problem," he said. "It's only when I twist it to the side that there's some pain, so the specialist thinks it's the ankle ligament. I want to get an MRI just to make sure that's the full extent of it. I'll ride at the trials on Tuesday then get it done afterwards. I'm suspended for the next 10 days anyway, so it will get a chance to rest."
