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Paralyzed jockey not wasting
time getting back to work
By Shannon Sollinger
Times Community Newspapers Staff Writer
Bay Cockbum, near-legendary huntsman at Loudoun West Hunt, really only has one direction.
Forward.
That has not changed since a 1998 riding accident catapulted him from the saddle to a high-tech wheelchair.
He had triumphed on Ironfist April 12 in the Eustis Cup at Loudoun Hunt Point-to-Point. A week later at the farm: a moment’s distraction, a zig, a zag, a fall from Classy Ivor last April 17 left Cockbum paralyzed from the mid-chest down. Classy Ivor went on to win the race he was being schooled for as Cockbum laid in a hospital bed with three displaced cervical vertebrae.
“If I’d had my fingers through the neck strap, I wouldn’t have a broken neck,” Cockbum surmised.
But wishes aren’t horses, and Cockbum today, less than a year after the accident and only five months after returning to his Olney, Md., home from the National Rehabilitation Center in Washington, D.C., is focused on the future. He has a lot to do.
“If they can go and find a cure, it’d be great if I can walk again,” Cockbum said. “I’d be the first to jump for joy, but you can’t just lay around and mope...You’ve got to.get on with life.”
A cure for spinal cord injuries would be just fine, in Cockbum’s view, but it is not what he calls “the big hope.” •
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