Jockey suffers blood bleed brain damage
Herald Sun
Danny Russell
April 27,2016
Michael Walker hopes to return to race riding at the Flemington meeting on May 7. Picture: Mark Dadswell
MICHAEL Walker says he has been given the all-clear to resume track work four weeks after he blacked out at home, knocked his head on a bath and suffered bleeding on the brain.
The Kiwi jockey said he would be back riding jump-outs at Flemington on Friday, but would need to sit a cognitive test before returning to race riding.
Walker, who turned 32 on Wednesday, said he planned to be back for the Flemington meeting on May 7.
“Since November last year I’ve only ridden a month,” he said. “I had a hip replacement over Christmas and then this happened, so I just want to get out there and do what I love doing.”
Walker said he can’t remember anything about the fall and specialists have been at a loss to explain how or why it happened.
“When I blacked out, I don’t remember anything,” he said. “Obviously I’ve been through a couple of people close to me passing — my Nan and a good friend — and I had the recent operation, so it might have been stress, but I don’t know.
“I’m fit and healthy and I felt really good at the time.”
Walker was discharged from hospital just two days after blacking out but rang Victorian Jockeys’ Association doctor Gary Zimmerman and complained of numbness and blurred vision.
Zimmerman directed Walker straight to the Epworth Hospital where he was kept under observation for a further 10 days.
“He said, ‘you should never have been discharged’,” Walker said.
Walker said he did not have any family in Australia but friend and fellow jockey Damian Lane had been regularly calling at his home to make sure he was OK.
The jockey formed a great partnership with Criterion last spring, winning the Group 1 Caulfield Stakes, finishing second in the Cox Plate and third in the Melbourne Cup.