Riders Saez, Doyle Injured in Churchill Spill

Riders Sebastian Saez and Sophie Doyle were transported to a Louisville area hospital after a spill in the stretch of the fifth race Thursday, Nov. 19 at Churchill Downs.

Churchill Downs senior director of communications Darren Rogers reported that Saez and Doyle were both transported to Norton Audubon Hospital. Both jockeys reported having full range of motion. Saez displayed concussion-like symptoms and complained of a sore neck while Doyle complained of pain in her right forearm, pelvis, and left knee.

Both of the horses involved, Seth Romero's Magnum Force, who was guided by Saez; and Joe Uliano's Gladhander, who was guided by Doyle, were walked off the track and returned to their barns on the Churchill backstretch.

In Thursday's fifth race, a seven-furlong claiming event for 3-year-olds and older that attracted 11 starters, apprentice rider Saez was rallying on Magnum Force when he encountered a wall of horses in early stretch. Magnum Force clipped heels with another horse and fell. Gladhander and Doyle then tumbled over the fallen horse just past the three-sixteenths pole.

Saez is the younger brother of successful rider Luis Saez, who currently ranks in the top ten North American-based riders by purses earnings; and the late jockey Juan Saez, who died at age 17 in October 2014 after an accident at Indiana Grand Racing and Casino when his horse clipped heels with a rival.

Doyle, England's top female apprentice jockey of 2010, secured her first U.S. graded stakes win at the recently completed Keeneland fall meet, guiding Fioretti to victory in the Thoroughred Club of America Stakes (gr. II).