The toughest game in town is for those without fear Back in the saddle: Kathy O'Hara returns on Saturday after a bad fall a fortnight ago. It has been only 15 days since Kathy O'Hara fell and had a horse trample over her head. On Saturday at Randwick, she returns to the racetrack. Jockeys are a hardy bunch and they need to be given the hazards of their job, but the rider of the horse which planted its hoof in the back of O'Hara's head, Hugh Bowman, describes the aftermath and the fear of not knowing his colleague's condition as one of the most frightening moments in his 17-year career. My horse hit her head flush, so I was very, very concerned for her safety. "Just the sheer impact," Bowman said. I was so pleased she came out of it the way she has. The fall: O'Hara crashes off Natch Catch at Canterbury. O'Hara escaped with a nasty gash on the back of her head, which required six stitches, and concussion but was passed fit to ride earlier this week by Racing NSW's medical liaison officer Ron Muratore. Her recollections of the incident remain vague. "[I remember] flipping out of the irons and falling, that's about all," O'Hara says. O'Hara is part of the lucky majority whose career, or life, is not ended by a fall, in a profession regarded as one of the most dangerous in the world. A study in 2010 conducted by scientists at Hobart's Menzies Research Institute, which analysed 75,000 races from 2002-06, found on average that licensed jockeys in Australia would fall one in every 240 rides - 27 per cent resulted in injury and one in 620 caused death. Since August there have been two deaths. While most who survive a fall get back in the saddle eventually, there is always a chance one might result in paralysis. You would think the prospect, however slim, of such a life-changing injury is enough for your average person in the street to find a new job, but not so jockeys. For O'Hara, and many of her colleagues, it is a case of getting back on the horse. "You just don't worry about it, you put that to the back of your mind and don't give it a second thought - you've got a job to do," O'Hara says. The same with Bowman. "If you are having thoughts of a horse falling or whatever, the best way to get through it is to just ride," he says. Falling is one of the hazards of the industry. The real concerns are head and spinal injuries, but as far as broken bones go, they'll heal. Victorian veteran Peter Mertens is going through that process. Mertens and apprentice Jordan Childs were involved in a horrific fall last month just days before the Melbourne Cup. Childs had surgery on both wrists, while Mertens is nursing a broken ankle, three broken ribs, a punctured lung, damage to his knee and a broken collarbone. He cannot bear weight on his ankle for another six weeks and until then will spend most of his day in a wheelchair. He uses a crutch to "hobble." At 50, Mertens is a veteran but has no intentions of hanging up the silks, such is his love of the sport. "I'm at the twilight of my career but I'm still riding winners and still enjoy it," says Mertens, a winner of seven group 1 races. I've got no thought of stopping now. As soon as the injuries heal, I'll be back in a saddle. I don't know how to explain it in layman's terms. If you're in a car race at high speed and a car comes up to you, the adrenalin takes over. It's about adrenalin and the excitement of winning a race. Mertens has, however, thought about retiring - but not since his first fall in 1988 when he broke his neck and spent 14 months out. He was told by neurosurgeons he was a "poofteenth of an inch" away from spinal-cord damage. "It wasn't far at all, I was just lucky, I was in a bad way for a long time," Mertens says. It made me step back and think about it, but as time goes on it heals all wounds. As I started to heal I needed to get back to it. Some don't want to go back, but I had no other desire to do anything else. Mertens is more concerned over the safety of his 16-year-old son Beau, who is an apprentice, but would not discourage him from pursuing a career as a jockey. I'm happy from what I've seen of him and trainers have relayed to me that he's not stupid, not careless and thinks his way through right. It's not if you have a fall, it's when you fall - helpfully he survives it. That's the way racing is, there's not one jockey that's never had it. That, however, does not mean there are not jockeys apprehensive at what may happen. Part of sports psychologist Grant Brecht's role with Racing NSW is to counsel jockeys who may be down on confidence, or the anxious families of riders. "Quite a few jockeys, especially if they've had a series of accidents, or family members are getting panicky each time they go to a race day, sometimes they will have second thoughts about whether they should continue riding," Brecht says. We don't push them one way to another. Most, if not all of them, get back to race riding and work through it. In such instances, Brecht will not tell a rider to quit or push on but teach them to focus on their riding techniques and to visualise themselves performing well. But sometimes the threat of serious and irreversible injury is too much. Sam Hyland, whose father Pat rode What A Nuisance to victory in the 1985 Melbourne Cup, had no choice but to retire in 2009 aged 32. Hyland fractured the C1 and C7 vertebrae and though he escaped permanent damage, he was given medical advice he could not ignore - next time you fall you may not be so fortunate. "It's inevitable you'll have falls, it goes with the job," says Hyland, who now works as a track walker for Racing Victoria and is an expert on TVN's racing coverage. Once you are shaky or nervous about it, it's not fair to your colleagues. You're not being fair to yourself and your connections you're riding for because the whole time you're worried about what's going to happen. That wasn't the case for me but as it turned out the doctors said if you have another fall you won't be so lucky - you have to move on to the next stage of your life. For O'Hara, she blocks out the threat of injury. "If you start thinking like that, it's probably time to hang up the boots," she says. It'll be business as usual and I'll be as competitive as ever.