hat is the real cert in this game. Night follows day. A jockey can expect to fall roughly once in every 15 rides in national hunt racing. Mullins suffered one routine dose aboard Douvan during the 2018 Queen Mother Champion Chase. A long-awaited showdown 12 months in the making between the French gelding and Altior prematurely ended at the fourth-last fence.

“I always find it amazing in a fall, you never remember it as video,” Mullins recalls.

“It is flashes. The horse, the ground. Often you instinctively get your arm up. That is why we do so many collar bones. An outstretched arm means all the force goes through that. Look, better your collar bone than your head.

“There definitely is a way to fall. You often see younger riders or riders who aren’t as fit and the way they hit the ground. You need to roll, move forward and take the sting out of it.”

Coming down is inevitable. How far you descend is somewhat controllable. Horse-riding has always come with a safety risk. Even if most of it is blind luck, accounting for a small margin that is not can prove critical. The bottom line is that at least trying to incorporate certain practises could be the difference between life and death.

The British Racing school use a mechanical fall simulator to teach apprentice jockeys how to fall. Riders are thrown off onto a landing crash mat. Peril is hardwired into the sport. Truth be told, this does not alienate punters; it is part of the allure.

The same is true for the main characters. Talk to jockeys and they will rave about the sweet satisfaction that comes from successfully steering around a bad jumper. The thrall stems from the threat. A great highwire act.

In Ireland there is no such fall simulator or theoretical crash course, only the real one. Ruby Walsh learned the hard way, the school of hard knocks and thundering drops. From ponies up, discovering what works and what hurts.

Haut En Couleurs sends jockey Bryan Cooper flying into the ground when holding a lead at the last fence in the Horse & Jockey Hotel Steeplechase (Grade 2). Thankfully both were OK after their fall PICTURE: HEALY RACING

“I’d keep it simple. Keep moving, keep rolling,” he says with typical candour. “Always look for your feet. If you are looking for your feet, you keep rolling. Every fall is different and at times it is hard to even get into position to find your feet.

“A lot of it is trusting your natural reaction. Even before that, you have a decision to make. The hundredths of a second from take-off side to landing side. You have to balance it up, at times a horse doesn’t take off and you are waiting for him to stand or fall.

“If you automatically get ready, what if the horse stays or only makes a mistake and you ready to fall? You have to judge it. Will he point the leg. Certain falls then you have no time to react. Just a bad go, the horse doesn’t propel you off, so you land too close and it comes down on top of you.”

There are different shades and degrees of danger. A fall in a hurdle race can be more serious than in a steeplechase. Smaller obstacles mean more speed. For a contender, speed is the priority. In a fall, speed is the enemy.

“So many bad falls are off good jumpers,” Walsh declares. “When a good jumper gets it wrong, they get it really wrong.

“A bad jumper knows how to make a mistake. They know how to survive. A good jumper is really slick and really accurate. If they get that wrong, the horse tends to get a really bad fall.

“A great jumper is a confident jumper. The more confident you get, the more you push the limits. A horse isn’t any different. I found I had some terrible falls off great jumpers.”

Let’s return to Cheltenham 2018 for a moment. After all, Patrick Mullins was only on Douvan because Walsh came down on Al Boum Photo earlier that day.

His mount hit the second-last and plunged, rolling onto his lower body. It was the same leg Walsh broke at Punchestown the previous November. The toll was two fractures in the space of three months.

“I probably stayed on too long,” he explains. “I thought he would stand up. I didn’t go forward with him and stayed on too long. The speed had gone then and my bodyweight was back on him so I couldn’t get forward to roll off. I was caught in the wrong place. That is how it goes.”

There are two types of falls, stresses Maxine O’Sullivan. She is the daughter of Lombardstown trainer Eugene and a leading star on the point-to-point circuit who has also enjoyed her fair share of success on the racecourse.

TOUGH TO TAKE: Jamie Moore after parting company with Goshen at the last in The JCB Triumph Hurdle.PICTURE: RACING TV

At home they have all kinds of horses to be schooled, many of whom are young and bold. In those situations, she gets up already conscious of tumbling down. She can see that hit coming and that is tolerable. The alternative is torturous. Nothing is worse than the punch that leaps unexpectedly from the earth.

“My worst falls, one was my leg. It was actually a soft fall, but it was an impact break. Basically, my heel hit the ground first, so my lower leg smashed off my femur. The top of my tibia smashed. It is very common with builders who fall off ladders.

“The worst fall I had then was on the flat in a bumper in Killarney. That is the big difference. Jumping a fence, 80% of the time you know you will fall. It might be a second, on the last stride you know. They might survive, they might fall and you are prepared for that.

“That is different to the random one on the flat where you least expect it. They are the worst. A horse will clip its heels and you are on the ground without realising what happened. That happened to me in Killarney. I was on the home bend, going well and the horse broke his leg.

“There were ten horses behind me, it happened so quick. I was very lucky, really sore and concussed but so lucky.

“I thought he tripped or something because I was on the inner. I was really blaming myself, ‘I was in a stupid position and it was my fault.’ So first I was pissed off, still raging when I went to the doctors. Then I found out about the poor horse. Suddenly it was different and just sad.”

It’s not simply a case of how you hit the ground. Horses vary in terms of their surface preference while jockeys are all in agreement. The harder the going, the worse it feels.

“That is the reason they stopped all weather jumping,” stresses Mullins.

“If you fall on sand, you stop dead. It is way more severe. If the ground is softer the impact is less. More jockeys and horses get injured in the summer. That is why watering is so important for jockeys and horses.

“Often trainers say there is too much watering, I find the better horses and better jockeys don’t chance themselves on hard ground. Some trainers think they win on harder ground but that is not a way forward for the sport.”

DISAPPOINTMEMT: Jockey Ruby Walsh walks back to the weigh room after collecting his saddle from Annie Power after their fall at the last hurdle in 2015.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Before every outing a jockey considers the card and maps out tactics. Part of that is looking out for dodgy jumpers with poor records. Even still, try as they may sometimes the field is a fickle mistress. Both O’Sullivan and Mullins laugh about it because if they didn’t, they would pull their hair out. Pinballing around the pack during a race and sure enough, they end up behind the exact liability they were trying to avoid.

“Sod’s law,” says Barry Geraghty with a chuckle. A sure thing.

“At the same time, I remember going out before Tiger Roll’s Grand National thinking, ‘he is too small. He won’t get around here’. He went and won it. Usually, you know the ones you don’t want to be behind.” So, a jockey clings on to a 500kg horse motoring along at speeds of up to 50kph and then comes down. The key is what comes after. These animals can deliver 1,000 Newtons of force in a single kick. They wear steel or aluminium shoes. A glance is dangerous. As for a stamp, devastating.

Consider this: in the final five years of Barry Geraghty’s career he missed a combined total of 18 months having broken both legs, both arms, his shoulder blade, eight ribs and punctured his lung.

“One of them, the arm, was impact. The rest were all kicks,” he says. “That can be anything or everything. Sometimes you have some control. I remember falling at the last in Galway out front on the rail. I was able to look as I was passing the pillars in the rail, trying to pick my spot to get through.

“If I stayed on the course, I’d get the shit kicked out of me. Sometimes you can have some influence on where you are going and even if you don’t, you’d be surprised at how well your instincts steer you in a split second.”

“There is a massive difference between a kick and being stood on,” adds Walsh. “And a kick is still bad. Still if you are moving the force isn’t as great. If you are static and stood on, it is a much greater impact. I’m not a physics genius but there is some dispersal of power if you are moving.”

A back protector and helmet can only do so much. After one particularly heavy fall Walsh crumbled into a ball. As the field passed by a horse came down on his shoulder blade. The force was such that it drove his elbow down and crushed his humerus, breaking the bone in three places.

Both Walsh and Geraghty worked with Santry physio Enda King to rehab after injuries and build a frame capable of withstanding the assured blows. A serious stint of core work helped them hold on longer; often returning from the point of no return. That strength also provided a spring and a bounce when they did drop.

In 2019 Geraghty endured a brutal fall and a subsequent kick that left him with two fractures in his right leg. This was the tipping point in a run of dreadful injuries. For a decade, he was the ultimate cerebral figure on track well accustomed to pain and punishment. Psychologically though, the season-on-season agony started to grind. With the help of King, he practiced the process of falling. Learned to embrace it all over again.

2022: Galopin Des Champs and Paul Townend fall at the last when clear in the Turners Novices' Chase (Grade 1). Both horse and jockey were ok. 

“It was good for me mentally really. When you come back after a bad injury, the initial falls are the ones you have real apprehension about. It is good to get them under your belt. It is good to practise, but it is so hard to replicate the movement.

“We were doing a full roll. I’d meet the ground, touching off my elbows. No sooner had my elbow touched when I flick to my shoulder. Shoulder on the ground and start rolling. It is a combination of movements. A survival mechanism.

“You can’t freeze in the moment, that has the potential to cause serious injury. You need to be fluid. If you resist and are tense, you will hit the ground much harder.”

Next week all sorts will flock to west UK and live it up across four days of festive fun. Mid-March means the sport, with all of the good, bad and ugly, takes centre stage. In a place beyond that intense glare, the exercise is the same. Horse racing is guaranteed headlines for one week every year. Horses and jockeys fall all year round.

When they do, the same small community is always there to pick them back up. The bind within the weights room may be special but it is not exclusive to those confines. For over 40 years, racing photographer Pat ‘Cash’ Healy has been capturing thrills and spills. Routinely his face is the first sight a fallen jockey sees when their vision returns.

“I know within five seconds if they will be ok or not,” Healy says. “Number one is the physical reaction. Number two I always go over to them, Ruby or Racheal or whoever and I say, ‘do you know who you are talking to? They hopefully say ‘yes, Pat Cash.’ “Do you know where you are? Listowel or Cheltenham or Navan. So then you know if the head is ok. Unfortunately, I’ve seen jockeys with bad injuries. I always remember Jonjo Bright at Tyrella Point to Point.

“He had a fall in front of me, and I knew just straight away, ‘this is trouble.’ His mouth… his lips were quivering. I’ve never seen it before. I just knew this was bad.

“I’ve seen jockeys get the same fall and for whatever reason the way they landed; they were ok. You know, this young fella is in trouble because of his body’s reaction. At the end of the day, it is like a crash and the body has a way of letting you know it is serious. Jonjo ended up paralysed and in a wheelchair.”

Of all the riders, Ruby Walsh was unique. Healy would walk over and await the usual diagnosis: ‘Cash, I am after doing my vertebrae. I did my ribs. He could basically tell you; I did my T5 or T7.’ A conversation with Healy quickly reveals one integral trait; he is in awe of the exceptionally brave men and women who saddle up every single week. Ask him about the art of falling and he immediately talks about the near misses, having captured countless recoveries and remarkable acts of horsemanship. Referencing a Kevin Brouder example from Naas in 2021, he recalls seeing the horse’s mistake in the viewfinder and marvelling as the jockey was launched sky bound only to land square on the horse’s back.

Lucky Number & Philip Enright part company at the last in the Horse & Jockey Beginners Steeplechase, both were OK after their fallPICTURE: HEALY RACING 

He has witnessed countless heart-stopping derailments. Mammal trainwrecks. And he watches earnestly as them pick themselves up and do it all over. And again. And again. And again.

“I’d go to the jockey room after a fall. The pain these lads are in, you see soccer with the rolling and crying they do. I’ve seen jockeys with broken legs or arms, a broke vertebrae in their neck, you go in to check on them and they are laughing and joking, straight away working out how long will they be out and what will they miss. They never moan.

“I remember John Thomas (McNamara) at Askeaton, god bless him, but he had a fall in front of me and said straight away, ‘fuck it. I put out my shoulder.’ He was off to Limerick hospital. I said, ‘right I’ll bring your car and your clothes and meet you there.’ “He said, ‘you will not. I’ll be back for the last race.’ And he was. They are amazing athletes. There are no other sportsmen like them. They walk on thin ice. One time in Navan, Stormin’ Norman had a fall in front of me. He was lying on the ground looking up at me and shouted up, ‘What am I riding in the next?’ I’ve no doubt if it was average he’d say, you know what I’ll take the rest of the day here to heal.

“Anyway, it was a good ride ,one of Edward O’Grady’s, Nick Dundee or some other strong horse. I told him that and he sure didn’t he jump up straight away, dust himself down and go back at it.”