{"id":427800,"date":"2025-09-16T02:41:19","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T02:41:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/427800\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T02:41:19","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T02:41:19","slug":"micheal-hellyer-incredibly-lucky-after-toowoomba-incident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/427800\/","title":{"rendered":"Micheal Hellyer incredibly lucky after Toowoomba incident"},"content":{"rendered":"

Veteran jockey Micheal Hellyer was headbutted so hard by his horse before a race that it knocked him out and sent him tumbling to the ground. Incredibly, the 37-year-old hoop says he is lucky.<\/p>\n

Footage of the incident shows Hellyer being legged onto the back of his mount, Southoftheborder, at Toowoomba on Saturday night before the four-year-old gelding flings its head backwards and makes heavy contact with Hellyer\u2019s face.<\/p>\n

\"Jockey<\/p>\n

Jockey Michael Hellyer is thrown from a horse.Credit: X<\/p>\n

The horse then rears, as a knocked-out Hellyer crashes to the ground.<\/p>\n

Despite the frightening nature of the incident, the jockey escaped with just a split lip and a concussion. He will be sidelined from riding for 12 days.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore I got on the horse, the trainer did warn me that he was a little bit on edge that evening. He just said, \u2018look, just watch him, he\u2019s a little bit fresh tonight\u2019,\u201d Hellyer told this masthead.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, I didn\u2019t take much out of it because usually the horse is very quiet. I had ridden the horse twice before that evening.<\/p>\n

\"Jockey<\/p>\n

Jockey Micheal Hellyer on race day at Flemington.Credit: Racing Photos via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cBut as soon as I got legged on, the horse just pushed me forward a little bit, and he just flung his head back really quick and got me right on the lip, just underneath the nose, and knocked me out instantly.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, these things can happen. It\u2019s very rare. But because I\u2019d ridden the horse before, I didn\u2019t think he had something like that in him, and, yeah, he got me a beauty.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Veteran jockey Micheal Hellyer was headbutted so hard by his horse before a race that it knocked him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4107],"tags":[1071,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-427800","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-racing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115211670988456392","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}