I said to myself, this
isn't going to get me
beat. I'll show 'em'
Two years on from the fall that changed his life, JT McNamara talks to Alastair Down
IN THROUGH the narrow gates to see John Thomas McNamara and his wife Caroline in their much-adapted white bungalow that is house, family home to three young children and 24-hour-a-day high-tech hospital.
John Thomas and Caroline have long resisted any contact with the media, taking the view that they have plenty to endure without subjecting themselves to ordeal by stupid question.
The invitation, via the shining light that is the Injured Jockeys Fund, to go to see them in their home in County Limerick, was accepted as an honour but not without a degree of trepidation.
There is a palpable air of apprehension as I walk in to see a figure venerated in the weighing room as a horseman who was as good as, or better than, 99 per cent of jockeys who ever rode, who carved his reputation as an amateur feared by all, and who was close to retiring at the age of 37 when the sky fell in, random and merciless, at the first fence in the Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir Chase on March 14, 2013.
But if you're after gloom or even a trace of pity then don't go to John Thomas McNamara's home. While every day may be a battle, with the struggle of hourly having to deal with stuff you and I couldn't face for a second, let alone forever, this is also a place of sparky wit, cracking lines and an utterly stubborn refusal to be cowed.
"I can be plenty bossy," laughs Caroline and the riposte comes rapier sharp from JT that "you'd better believe it, Alastair".
My feeble response that he must have known that when he married her, draws the typical reply: "Yeah, but I never read the small print!"
There are ground rules to establish about the McNamaras. You could fill a 24-page supplement with the help they have had from shattered friends and fans, the brilliant nurses and doctors - and a few medical practitioners who were less than good. And then there has been the money raised by a bereft public and the endless stream of visitors, fearful but determined to see one of racing's finest in his time of need.
Never in 30 years have I known the weighing room so dislocated and desolate as they have been by John Thomas's situation, not least, of course, because they are terrified of something similar happening to them.
The practicalities are plenty heavy to deal with, yet somehow the McNamaras soar above them, though not without some hard labour and grim determination. But, Christ, there is some team in place to slam through the brick walls of every day.
In recent days I have listened to some hard men cracked of voice in their admiration for Caroline, although of course the orchestration has to come from John Thomas himself, who is an arresting mixture of bloody-minded, determined and genuinely funny, despite inevitable degrees of frustration nobody who is not entirely motionless from the neck down will understand.
HE CAN spend up to four hours at a time off the ventilator, although it is often less. Three or four times a day - sometimes more - a suction pipe is passed down into his lungs and Caroline says: "It sucks out the secretions and mucus and if his lungs are bad you have to physically shake his chest really hard to move things.
"We have to have two carers here in the house 24 hours a day and the cost of looking after him is somewhere between €300,000 and €400,000 a year. He has amazed me the way he has dealt with his total surrender of privacy and dignity. He is less fazed by it than the rest of us as we have people in the house 24/7 and that takes a lot of getting used to.
"John has accepted that this is the way it is. As long as he gets to the yard every morning and can immerse himself in his horses - he leaves on the van at ten to eight every morning on the dot - then he'll be all right.
"When it first happened I thought 'Oh no, of all the people to be hit by this - a man who would happily spend all his day on horses'. I thought his incredibly strong personality wouldn't deal with the intrusion and sheer frustration. But the anger in the beginning has passed. There's no depression or anger now.
"There was a long period of severe neuropathic pain as the nerves surrounding the diaphragm tried to reconnect but simply couldn't. He said it was like having a rope tied tight around his chest and then yanked by a tractor. It took a long time to get the meds balanced for pain and sleep.
"Now the worst thing is that he gets fed up with looking at me all day!"
Rapier quick, John Thomas says: "Now that's for sure."
Caroline laughs and adds: "And I'll tell you this. I see John as the same man I fell in love with and married. Exactly the same person he was before his injury, same personality, and I treat him the same way I did before his accident.
"Our lives have changed enormously but I can look beyond his disabilities. I have great respect for John and how he has dealt with all the issues and setbacks he has encountered. He still has that great strength and total determination that all jump jockeys require.
"It's impossible to overstate the role my mother, Phil, has played because she has made light of an incredible amount of burden.
"She's a nurse and never had illusions about what we all faced. She's a very strong, driven lady and she has become our children's second mother. She holds the fort and without her encouragement, strength, help and energy we wouldn't be where we are today. We would be lost without her and John would be the first to say it."
When you talk with racing people there are plenty who trot out the trite view that John Thomas would be better off dead. There is no malice in them, it is effectively just an admission they could not begin to deal with what he faces for the rest of his life.
But the man himself is not prepared to vote in that lobby of despair. "Of course there have been low days and the worst were when I was in hospital in Dublin because they gave me no hope. That just made me more determined and I said to myself this is not going to get me beat. I'll show 'em.
"The sheer number of visitors and the support from the public helped me keep going. All those people making the time to come to see me - it showed a few people liked me anyway!
"Not being able to play with the kids is the hardest thing. And it always will be."
And Caroline has had to be plenty firm from the very first days she saw her husband in Frenchay hospital, near Bristol - an experience for which there can never be anything approaching an adequate preparation.
She says: "When the lads first started coming to see him I told them: ‘Guys, it might be hard but we don't cry. If you get upset, you'll have to go outside.'"
In a sense, the policy is still in place. "We're not a teary house," she says, before adding in a voice that trails quietly away in the breathtaking understatement: "Though we've had plenty of cause."
But laughter was never far away, even in the grimmest of times. Racing photographer Liam Healy has been a great friend of John Thomas for more than 20 years and visits the house so often he must be paying council tax on the place.
"I first saw him about ten days after the fall in Frenchay and it was something about his eyes that relaxed me, though he couldn't talk at the time," says Healy.
"Then a while later Caroline asked me to fly over again and we walked into the intensive care unit and John Thomas had been fitted with a voice box. Straight away he whispered "And you can f**k off Mr Healy," and I replied 'Oh Jesus, you're fecking back, you old bollocks'.
"It was a great moment but all the nurses looked at us horrified."
isn't going to get me
beat. I'll show 'em'
Two years on from the fall that changed his life, JT McNamara talks to Alastair Down
IN THROUGH the narrow gates to see John Thomas McNamara and his wife Caroline in their much-adapted white bungalow that is house, family home to three young children and 24-hour-a-day high-tech hospital.
John Thomas and Caroline have long resisted any contact with the media, taking the view that they have plenty to endure without subjecting themselves to ordeal by stupid question.
The invitation, via the shining light that is the Injured Jockeys Fund, to go to see them in their home in County Limerick, was accepted as an honour but not without a degree of trepidation.
There is a palpable air of apprehension as I walk in to see a figure venerated in the weighing room as a horseman who was as good as, or better than, 99 per cent of jockeys who ever rode, who carved his reputation as an amateur feared by all, and who was close to retiring at the age of 37 when the sky fell in, random and merciless, at the first fence in the Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir Chase on March 14, 2013.
But if you're after gloom or even a trace of pity then don't go to John Thomas McNamara's home. While every day may be a battle, with the struggle of hourly having to deal with stuff you and I couldn't face for a second, let alone forever, this is also a place of sparky wit, cracking lines and an utterly stubborn refusal to be cowed.
"I can be plenty bossy," laughs Caroline and the riposte comes rapier sharp from JT that "you'd better believe it, Alastair".
My feeble response that he must have known that when he married her, draws the typical reply: "Yeah, but I never read the small print!"
There are ground rules to establish about the McNamaras. You could fill a 24-page supplement with the help they have had from shattered friends and fans, the brilliant nurses and doctors - and a few medical practitioners who were less than good. And then there has been the money raised by a bereft public and the endless stream of visitors, fearful but determined to see one of racing's finest in his time of need.
Never in 30 years have I known the weighing room so dislocated and desolate as they have been by John Thomas's situation, not least, of course, because they are terrified of something similar happening to them.
The practicalities are plenty heavy to deal with, yet somehow the McNamaras soar above them, though not without some hard labour and grim determination. But, Christ, there is some team in place to slam through the brick walls of every day.
In recent days I have listened to some hard men cracked of voice in their admiration for Caroline, although of course the orchestration has to come from John Thomas himself, who is an arresting mixture of bloody-minded, determined and genuinely funny, despite inevitable degrees of frustration nobody who is not entirely motionless from the neck down will understand.
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HE CAN spend up to four hours at a time off the ventilator, although it is often less. Three or four times a day - sometimes more - a suction pipe is passed down into his lungs and Caroline says: "It sucks out the secretions and mucus and if his lungs are bad you have to physically shake his chest really hard to move things.
"We have to have two carers here in the house 24 hours a day and the cost of looking after him is somewhere between €300,000 and €400,000 a year. He has amazed me the way he has dealt with his total surrender of privacy and dignity. He is less fazed by it than the rest of us as we have people in the house 24/7 and that takes a lot of getting used to.
"John has accepted that this is the way it is. As long as he gets to the yard every morning and can immerse himself in his horses - he leaves on the van at ten to eight every morning on the dot - then he'll be all right.
"When it first happened I thought 'Oh no, of all the people to be hit by this - a man who would happily spend all his day on horses'. I thought his incredibly strong personality wouldn't deal with the intrusion and sheer frustration. But the anger in the beginning has passed. There's no depression or anger now.
"There was a long period of severe neuropathic pain as the nerves surrounding the diaphragm tried to reconnect but simply couldn't. He said it was like having a rope tied tight around his chest and then yanked by a tractor. It took a long time to get the meds balanced for pain and sleep.
"Now the worst thing is that he gets fed up with looking at me all day!"
Rapier quick, John Thomas says: "Now that's for sure."
Caroline laughs and adds: "And I'll tell you this. I see John as the same man I fell in love with and married. Exactly the same person he was before his injury, same personality, and I treat him the same way I did before his accident.
"Our lives have changed enormously but I can look beyond his disabilities. I have great respect for John and how he has dealt with all the issues and setbacks he has encountered. He still has that great strength and total determination that all jump jockeys require.
"It's impossible to overstate the role my mother, Phil, has played because she has made light of an incredible amount of burden.
"She's a nurse and never had illusions about what we all faced. She's a very strong, driven lady and she has become our children's second mother. She holds the fort and without her encouragement, strength, help and energy we wouldn't be where we are today. We would be lost without her and John would be the first to say it."
When you talk with racing people there are plenty who trot out the trite view that John Thomas would be better off dead. There is no malice in them, it is effectively just an admission they could not begin to deal with what he faces for the rest of his life.
But the man himself is not prepared to vote in that lobby of despair. "Of course there have been low days and the worst were when I was in hospital in Dublin because they gave me no hope. That just made me more determined and I said to myself this is not going to get me beat. I'll show 'em.
"The sheer number of visitors and the support from the public helped me keep going. All those people making the time to come to see me - it showed a few people liked me anyway!
"Not being able to play with the kids is the hardest thing. And it always will be."
And Caroline has had to be plenty firm from the very first days she saw her husband in Frenchay hospital, near Bristol - an experience for which there can never be anything approaching an adequate preparation.
She says: "When the lads first started coming to see him I told them: ‘Guys, it might be hard but we don't cry. If you get upset, you'll have to go outside.'"
In a sense, the policy is still in place. "We're not a teary house," she says, before adding in a voice that trails quietly away in the breathtaking understatement: "Though we've had plenty of cause."
But laughter was never far away, even in the grimmest of times. Racing photographer Liam Healy has been a great friend of John Thomas for more than 20 years and visits the house so often he must be paying council tax on the place.
"I first saw him about ten days after the fall in Frenchay and it was something about his eyes that relaxed me, though he couldn't talk at the time," says Healy.
"Then a while later Caroline asked me to fly over again and we walked into the intensive care unit and John Thomas had been fitted with a voice box. Straight away he whispered "And you can f**k off Mr Healy," and I replied 'Oh Jesus, you're fecking back, you old bollocks'.
"It was a great moment but all the nurses looked at us horrified."
