Shepherd and Mason facing injury absences

Jockeys Callum Shepherd and Joanna Mason are facing more time on the sidelines, having both recently just returned from injury.

Shepherd, who broke a wrist in November, aggravated his old injury when the Charlie Fellowes-trained Trois Vallees fell in a five-furlong handicap at Nottingham on Sunday.

He said: “I’ll be on the sofa for a little while. The horse sadly had a heart attack and the wrist started swelling up in one place, the same wrist I broke in November.

“It is fractured, but not too bad. The concern was it had opened up the old fracture again, but it hasn’t. I have a radial styloid fracture.

“It is hard to say when I will be back. I spoke to Dr Jerry Hill [the British Horseracing Authority’s chief medical officer], having sent him the X-ray. 

"It is a case of getting a CAT scan to see the full extent of it, but I think it will be a case of weeks, rather than months. That seems to be the expectation at the moment. Hopefully, that will be the case.

“It’s a tough one, but at the same time it could be a lot worse – it’s not your spine or your head.”

Mason, who was sidelined for 10 days last month when kicked in the knee by Jazz Samba following his win at Beverley on May 1,  faces a lengthy absence.

She suffered a leg fracture on Monday when three pigeons flew out of bushes adjacent to the gallops at her grandfather Mick and his son David Easterby’s , spooking a filly she was riding and unseating her.

Mason said: “I was riding a filly down the gallop and three pigeons flew out and she was just gone from underneath me.

“I just landed a bit funny on my ankle. I got up, hobbled down the gallop until my granddad picked me up. I put ice on it, went to Jack Berry House and they looked at it.

“I thought it was ligaments or a strain, I wasn’t really in much pain, so I thought I had stretched or whatever, but they said to go to Malton Hospital for an X-ray to rule everything out.

“It is a spiral fracture on my lower (distal) fibula. They say I’ll be off between four to six weeks, but I’m aiming for four.”

Adding insult to injury, Mason missed a winning ride on Menelaus, who took the mile-and-a-half handicap at Thirsk on Monday.

She added: “I was 10 days off after my knee was kicked at Beverley. I was getting on a roll and the horses are going well.

“But I feel like I’ve probably been quite lucky, because I’ve not had many injuries. Maybe it is just my time.

“My knee is still niggling me a little bit – there’s still quite a bit of swelling in it, but that’s the least of my worries now.”