Posted on 08/10/2022 10:24:41 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Champion jockey Taiki Yanagida passed away in New Zealand at the age of 28 after failing to recover from injuries sustained in a bad fall.
Taiki Yanagida, the 28-year-old champion jockey from Japan, passed away late on Tuesday, August 9 in Waikato Hospital in the city of Hamilton in New Zealand. He suffered injuries in a bad fall during at the Cambridge Raceway last Wednesday, August 3, and never recovered, as reported by the New Zealand Herald.
His mother Kayano, and Chiaki, one of his sisters, were at Taiki’s bedside when he passed away, after rushing to the country from Japan last Thursday, August 4. The young rider had been placed in an induced coma after he suffered brain damage and injuries to his spine in the accident.
During the fall, Taiki’s riding helmet had come off and his mount, Te Atutu Pash partially rolled over him as they both fell. Another horse rode over him, unable to avoid contact. It kicked him in the back as he lay on the ground at the synthetic racetrack, about 250 metres from the winning post.
Doctors had said that even if he survived, Taiki would probably not have been able to walk again, as the damage to his spinal cord was so severe.
There is shock among the racing community that such a young jockey has lost his life. He only started riding at the age of 18, when he was in Australia, before moving over to New Zealand. Since 2017, the young Japanese jockey had incredibly ridden more than 160 winners.
Speaking with the NZ Herald, Ted McLachlan, Taika’s racing manager, said, “He was such a wonderful young man. It really is a tragedy and so hard to watch what his mother and sister here have had to go through. This will really hurt the other people in the industry because Taiki was so popular”.
“Our deepest sympathies are with Taiki’s family – his mother Kayano, sisters Chiaki and Ayano, and his grandmother”, commented Bruce Sharrock, the CEO of New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing. “We share their grief at the loss of such a talented, friendly, and well-liked young man”, he added.
Sharrock released a statement on behalf of the deceased rider’s family, through his official Twitter profile @NZTRinc:
“I wanted to try and become a jockey but my Mum didn’t agree, she said I must go to university first,” Taiki told racing publication Raceform in June. “I completed one year at university before I said I was going to Australia to train to be a jockey”, he confessed.
Known affectionately as ‘Tiger’ among the racing world, Taiki Yanagida is the first rider since December 2016 to die in New Zealand. Rebecca Black had previously passed away after an accident at the racetrack in Gore, on the South Island.
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When did he get the covid shot?
Very sad. I love horses and loved riding; but it’s a very dangerous sport, especially racing them.
Most racing sports have risk. Some more than others. Always sad when one of the racers die from injuries while racing.
This is tragic. I wonder if his death cert states he died from Covid?
safe and effective
RIP.
I stopped wondering that as soon as I saw that he injured himself when falling off a horse.
But you won’t be the only one who asks. Just the first.
“I stopped wondering that as soon as I saw that he injured himself when falling off a horse.”
Who’s to say he didn’t fall off the horse because he fainted from the vax?
Or fell on a booster shot!
Totally healthy until he got the vaxx.... /s
Short people fall a further distance, no?
my cousin was a rider in the 60’s and 70’s...he made a ton of money..but man ..he had some brutal spills and injuries. His worse was at old Narragansett Park in Rhode Island...actually read his last rites....
That was a short life.
Good grief - how ignorant. Stop treating people's deaths as fodder for your issue advocacy.
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