Attfield sustains multiple injuries in training accident

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Roger Attfield saw Dyna’s Recoleta win a turf allowance Sunday at Keeneland, but not from a preferred vantage point.

Attfield watched the race on television from his Toronto home while recovering from significant injuries sustained earlier this month in a training accident at Payson Park in Florida.

“I was thinking I was still 27 years old, and I was breaking a big Danish warmblood 3-year-old,” Attfield, 76, said this week by phone. “I got dumped, and he ran over the top of me. I cracked some ribs, and he stepped on my foot and broke quite a few bones. There are pins and plates and screws in there, so I’ll be hopping around for a few months. It’s a lot worse than I thought it was, actually, but I’m alive.”

Attfield said he was scheduled for a second surgery on the foot Thursday. In the meantime, most of his horses have returned to Woodbine from their annual winter sojourn to Payson Park following the usual spring stopover at Keeneland. Before Dyna’s Recoleta, a Charles Fipke homebred, Attfield had one win at the Keeneland meet that ends Friday: Shakhimat, who led throughout in the Grade 3 Transylvania on opening day, April 8.

Attfield said just a few of his horses remain in Kentucky, where he had starts planned through Kentucky Derby week at Churchill Downs. He will be represented Friday at Keeneland by Goodyearforroses in the Grade 3 Bewitch, the closing-day feature.

“I’m in close touch with the staff every day and actually watch video of their training,” he said.

Attfield, a native of Berkshire, England, was inducted into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame in 1999 and in the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in the U.S. in 2011. He is a seven-time Sovereign Award winner as the top trainer in Canada and has won the Queen’s Plate a remarkable eight times.