Caserta sidelined for six weeks after fall

Victorian apprentice Chris Caserta will be out of action for six weeks after a race fall at Sale.

Apprentice jockey Chris Caserta has a fractured back following a four-horse fall at Sale.

Along with fellow jockeys Thomas Stockdale, Joe Bowditch and Michael Walker, Caserta fell around the 600m mark of Wednesday’s fifth race that led to the abandonment of the meeting.

Caserta was airlifted to hospital in Melbourne with Stockdale and Bowditch taken to the Sale hospital while Walker returned home on Wednesday.

A Victorian Jockeys’ Association update on Thursday morning said Caserta had a confirmed fracture of the C5 vertebrae, a bruised lung and concussion with an expected recovery time of six weeks.

Bowditch, who was initially thought to have suffered a broken clavicle, was cleared of any breaks but has soft tissue damage.

Matthew Hyland, chief executive of the VJA, said Stockdale had fractured the fifth metatarsal bone in his left foot and will be in a moon boot for six to eight weeks.

He said Stockdale also received facial lacerations and a possible broken nose and was heavily concussed.

Walker was stiff and sore, forgoing is one ride at Pakenham on Thursday but expects to be fit to ride in jump-outs at Flemington on Friday and Ballarat that afternoon before five rides at Moonee Valley on Saturday.

Walker said Wednesday’s fall was like no other he had been involved in, describing it as a scene from the movie The Matrix.

“When the first one went down I was about three lengths off them,” Walker told RSN927.

“It was really slow, like in the movie The Matrix. I was in the air and I was thinking to myself, ‘right what’s going to break, what’s going to snap’.

“I was actually thinking the worse.”