Kind of like porn stars, I don’t really consider jockeys to be real people. People go to the horse races to see the animals these guys are sitting astride, not the guys themselves. It’d be like going to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. I’m going to see the factory, not the little Oompa-Loompas that work there. They’re pretty much just a means to an end. Wee need them to get what we want. Cue you mentally making the connection between that statement and porn.
That all being said, it maybe explains why I don’t feel as bad for this jockey who got kicked in the face by a horse and then run over the ambulance that was called in to treat him as I would if the person this happened to was taller than 5′ 5″.
Via Belfast Telegraph:
“A Northern Ireland jockey has told how he was run over by the ambulance called to help him after a horse kicked him in the face while he was riding in Italy. The vehicle broke Chris Meehan’s leg after his mount knocked him out, broke his nose and left him with a gash to his jaw that required 27 stitches…Chris, whose father teaches paramedics how to drive ambulances, was in Italy for a hurdle race when the animal kicked him.
“The starter came over to help me because I was on my back and choking on my blood,” he explained. He put me in the recovery position, with my right leg out straight. As if (my injuries) weren’t bad enough, the racecourse ambulance came up alongside us and reversed up onto my leg. They stopped it on top of my leg, so I started screaming, but it broke it straight away. Everyone around me had to push it off me. You have to laugh, really.”
Meehan planned to return to jump racing following a stint on the flat, but he now faces at least two months on the sidelines before he can do anything. The jockey, who returns to Northern Ireland today for surgery on his leg and face, saw the funny side of the painful incident.
“What makes it worse is my father, brother and aunt are all ambulance people,” he said. “My father actually teaches most people in Northern Ireland and England how to drive the ambulance. It’s just bizarre – you couldn’t make it up.””
Not going to lie, Chris here is way less upset than I would be if the ambulance called to help me instead broke my leg. That’d be like having a bunch of firemen showing up with lighter fluid and sausage links to your house as it slowly becomes engulfed in flames. Yet again, I don’t have true feelings of pity for this guy. There’s something cartoonishly funny about a short guy getting kicked in the face and then run over by an ambulance. Maybe because it hearkens me back to the days of watching Bugs Bunny shoot Elmer Fudd in the butthole with a double barrelled shotgun. Now that I’m thinking about it, the enjoyment I’m pulling from this story may, in fact, be a direct result of being bombarded at a young age by violence in pop culture. So, if anything, it’s not my fault. I’m more of a victim than Chris is. At least his wounds will heal. Mine, however, are more than simply surface-level.