Reid to ponder his driving future

By Michael Guerin

Steven Reid says his driving days may be over after a freak accident at Alexandra Park on Friday night.

But he realises it could have ended a lot worse.

Reid was driving Take The Miki, the talented pacer he trains with partner Simon McMullan, in race two when the sulky seat came loose and slipped off, dumping Reid on to the track around the 180m mark.

That wasn’t much fun but Reid was relatively unscathed until Enjoy Me ran over him as he lay on the track, with the horse actually missing him but Enjoy Me’s sulky wheel driving over Reid and hitting what could politely be described as his lower back.

That also saw Enjoy Me’s driver Ben Butcher thrown from the sulky and while no horses were hurt both men went to hospital.

Butcher says he has bruised ribs and a sore hip he landed on and is likely to miss Auckland Cup night but was not too bad.

Reid admits the replay of the incident looked humorous once it was established nobody was badly hurt and the horses were okay.

“It did look kinda funny on the video but it bloody hurt,” says Reid.

“When I fell it wasn’t too bad and I was lying there thinking that if I was at the front of the field I was lucky nobody ran over me.

“And then Ben’s mare ran over me but only with her wheel. But she still got me pretty solid around my behind.”

Reid says now that is almost totally recovered the incident has made him reconsider the wisdom of driving, something he only came back to recently after an 11-month break.

“I almost gave it away before I came back recently and while I don’t really want this to be the way I go out of driving I think it might be time to give it away, even though this wasn’t my fault or the horse’s fault.”

Reid says he and McMullan took five yearlings home from the Karaka yearling sales in February and are keen to concentrate on bringing young horses through to target races like the Harness Million they won with Magic Four in what was the upset of the harness season.

Related posts