Larry Jones severely injured in fall at Delaware Park

Larry Jones, the trainer of 2011 Horse of the Year Havre de Grace, is in the intensive care unit of Christiana Hospital in Delaware with two fractured ribs, a bruised lung, and bleeding on the brain after being thrown from a horse during Saturday morning training hours at Delaware Park.

According to Deidre Jackson, an assistant trainer for Jones, the bleeding of the brain does not require surgery.

“As long as it doesn’t get any worse, it looks like he’s going to be okay,” Jackson said Saturday night by phone. “So far, it’s as good as it can be right now.”

Jones was coming off the track on a 2-year-old when that horse reared and unseated Jones, who landed on his face. Jones was taken to nearby Christiana Hospital where a CT Scan revealed the internal injuries.

Jackson said there is no pressure on the brain and “as long as it stays that way he won’t have to have surgery,” she said.

Jones is one of a small percentage of trainers who gallops horses every day. At approximately 6-feet, 180 pounds, Jones is considered big for an exercise rider, though he considers it “the best part of my job,” according to an interview he did with Daily Racing Form in 2012.

Even when Jones retired from training in 2010, he continued to get on horses for his wife Cindy, who was the stable’s trainer.

Larry Jones has trained a bevy of graded stakes-winning horses in his career, led by the mare Havre de Grace, who won five graded events in 2011, including the Woodward against males en route to being named Horse of the Year.

Jones also trained Kentucky Oaks winners Believe You Can and Proud Spell as well Hard Spun and Eight Belles, stakes winners who finished second in the Kentucky Derby in 2007 and 2008, respectively.

The current star of Jones’s stable is the 3-year-old colt Albano, runner-up in the Lecomte and Risen Star stakes who was withdrawn from consideration for the Kentucky Derby after running fifth in the Louisiana Derby.