Gilligan poised to resume riding career

Jack Gilligan, the 25-year-old jockey, is set to resume race riding later this week at Fair Grounds.

Gilligan was named to ride a horse on Friday, but said that mount will be scratched and that his first race in more than one year comes Saturday.

Gilligan has been out of action since a Fair Grounds mount flipped in the gate and ejected him, causing head and shoulder injuries and a fractured clavicle. It was the third straight Fair Grounds meet during which Gilligan met with serious injury, following a scary mid-race spill in January 2020 and an accident in 2019 where his mount went over the rail.

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All the injuries involved his head, and after the latest setback Gilligan visited the Tulane Institute of Sports Medicine in New Orleans for a more comprehensive assessment of his condition. The repeated head injuries, Gilligan found out, were exacting a toll on his brain and he needed a sustained rest to heal.

“Originally it was eight months, but they extended it out to a year,” said Gilligan, who grew up in England. “I was slowly but surely recovering.”

Gilligan, whose agent is Austin Cantrell, said that late this summer, still struggling to regain his health, he contemplated a switch to training or a departure from the sport entirely.

“A lot of different things went through my mind,” he said. “It wasn’t until August that I started feeling better.”