\u201cWe ended up having some complications, so I think I have had six operations, although Katrina [his wife] tells me it is seven,\u201d says Purdon.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was nobody\u2019s fault, I was lucky enough to have an amazing surgeon who was a great guy but, when you are dealing with the body, same as in horses, things can go wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I am good now and have been back driving quite a lot of track work.\u201d\u2028<\/p>\n
There is no secret reason why Purdon wants to partner Higher Power tomorrow, even though the young trotter potentially has $800,000 worth of feature races coming up before the end of the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could get somebody else to drive him, but I want to keep my hand in,\u201d says the 70-year-old.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am enjoying driving track work, and I think being out there on racenight gives you a better idea of what is going on and maintains that connection.<\/p>\n
\u201cI won\u2019t be driving a lot, or even all the time, but am looking forward to tomorrow night and being back out there. I\u2019m quite excited.\u201d <\/p>\n
With so many young drivers having come through the ranks and Purdon being absent from the Alexandra Park driver\u2019s room for six years, is he worried he might need to find a new locker?<\/p>\n
\u201cFunny you should mention that. I was in there the other day and they still have my name on my old locker where I used to sit every week, so I think I will be fine,\u201d he laughs.<\/p>\n
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the <\/b>Herald<\/b> as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the <\/b>Herald\u2019s<\/b> Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world\u2019s biggest horse racing carnivals.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe ended up having some complications, so I think I have had six operations, although Katrina [his wife]…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4107],"tags":[29827,26333,160416,8453,24390,29477,9348,92819,50449,21030,3577,6491,160417,160418,1071,26335,79,49944,40881,5598,6093,26339,16,15,9985,42402,4400,9642],"class_list":{"0":"post-484392","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-barry","9":"tag-comeback","10":"tag-famer","11":"tag-friday","12":"tag-hall","13":"tag-him","14":"tag-horse","15":"tag-legends","16":"tag-make","17":"tag-night","18":"tag-of","19":"tag-partner","20":"tag-purdon","21":"tag-racetrack","22":"tag-racing","23":"tag-return","24":"tag-sports","25":"tag-surprise","26":"tag-than","27":"tag-the","28":"tag-to","29":"tag-track","30":"tag-uk","31":"tag-united-kingdom","32":"tag-will","33":"tag-years","34":"tag-younger","35":"tag-zealand"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115341605290994308","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484392","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=484392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}