In Life Beyond The Fall, the bracing and uplifting new documentary about the former jockey Graham Lee, there is an interview with Tilly Cumming, the clinical lead at the Matt Hampson Foundation. Ever since the starting stalls accident that left Lee paralysed from the neck down, almost two years ago now, the Get Busy Living rehab centre has been a pillar of his violently reordered life.
When Lee first arrived, directly from hospital, Cumming didn’t know anything about him. Nothing about his Galway roots or the Grand National he won, or the Ascot Gold Cup, or the year that he was leading rider at the Cheltenham Festival, or the nearly 2,000 winners he rode, split between National Hunt and the Flat and how exceptional that was. She said she could have gone searching on the internet, but she didn’t want to know. None of it was important.
“I try really hard to meet people where they are at that point [in their lives],” says Cumming. “Who is this man? Who is he inside? Not from what he has achieved, not for what he has done, not for what he was known for – but who is he?”
In his life as a jockey, the answer to that question had a narrow bandwidth. Of all the professional sports, racing is the most immersive. Each day hurtles headlong into the next.
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In the documentary he talks about winning the Grand National on Amberleigh House in 2004, arguably the greatest triumph of his career. Within a couple of hours, though, his mind wandered to his workaday rides at Hexham a day later and what each of them would need from him. Vanilla horses in bread-and-butter races. That was how his mind was programmed to behave: next day, next ride, next winner; next, next, next.
“I should have embraced the day,” he says. “It was mad. Mental ... Life was riding. Life was about performing.”
All Lee remembers from the accident is hitting the ground. As the gates opened the horse ducked suddenly and catapulted Lee over its neck, causing fractures to his cervical spine on impact.
Within a couple of hours, it was clear that he had suffered catastrophic paralysis. At one stage, very soon after the accident, his heart stopped and when they pulled him round there were six doctors and eight nurses standing at his bed. The gravity of everything was unavoidable.
“[My heart] flatlined,” he says. “I was just gone. That place I went to when I flatlined, I was so chilled, relaxed, calm.”
He remembers very little from his time in hospital, except the crazy places he visited when he slept. “I can remember very, very accurately the dreams and even now they scare the life out of me because I remember everything about every dream.”
The cruellest irony is that the accident should have happened while Lee was riding on the flat, where falls are so rare. He was 36 when he switched from the jumps, having suffered the usual catalogue of broken bones. Four years earlier his jaw was so badly broken in a fall at Huntingdon that three plates were inserted. He thought about going on the flat then, but his heart was in the jumps.
If their weight is stable, flat jockeys can carry on for much longer than jumps jockeys. Lee was 49 when the accident happened but there were jockeys in their 50s alongside him in the weigh room. “I think deep down, hand on heart, I wasn’t really enjoying it that much the last couple of years,” he says. “But what was keeping me going was that it was easy money. You have to dig a lot of holes, you have to wash a lot of cars, to [make the same] as four or five riding fees a day. That’s a good day’s work.”
The other thing keeping him going was the pursuit of 1,000 winners on the flat. He had already achieved that milestone over jumps and nobody had ever done it in both codes. He had reached the 900s. In racing’s heavily self-referential world it would have been a monumental thing to do. In his other life, it made perfect sense. Every sportsperson needs something to elevate the grind. He wasn’t wrong to chase that dream.
“That’s why I kept going [the 1,000 flat winners],” he says. “At the end of the day it’s just a figure, isn’t it? So what if I rode 1,000 winners on the flat. Whoopedoo.
“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I was very fortunate in my career to ride big winners. But I have lots of time to reflect [now]. At the end of the day it’s just horses running around a field. I’d give up every winner I ever rode to get up and walk out of this chair and hug my wife [Becky] and hug Amy and Robbie [his children]. I’d give up every winner just to give those three guys a hug.”
The documentary was made by Niall Hannity, a Racing TV presenter and a former jockey. Lee and Hannity have been close friends since they worked together in Ferdy Murphy’s yard, nearly 30 years ago. In June, Lee told Hannity that he was ready to talk on camera.
The location they chose for the interview was the Get Busy Living Centre because that has been such a bountiful source of energy for his new life. The centre was founded by Matt Hampson, a former rugby player who was paralysed from the neck down at an England under-21 training session 10 years ago.
“The best counselling I’ve ever had is [talking to] Matt,” Lee says. “Hampo is an incredible human being. It’s so difficult for me to get my head around what has happened. I never sat still. But the only good thing to come of my injury is I’ve met some incredible people, that I’d have never met before.
Lee has come to an accommodation with hope. He cannot countenance any other way to live. He is convinced that, eventually, there will be some medical breakthrough.
In the documentary he talks about his “very, very moderate” ability as a jockey. But he also knew why his career had been a success. “It was hard work and pigheadedness and being thick that got me to where I kind of got to.”
When Cumming looked beyond the accident and the wheelchair, that is what she saw.
♦ Graham Lee: Life Beyond The Fall, Racing TV website
