Surrey, BC native Casie Coleman has been riding a wave of training success for the past few years, but it wasn’t that long ago when what she refers to as “a self-inflicted barn fire” threatened to end her career in the industry
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The incident happened at Sandown Park in Victoria, BC in 2000 while she was working as a 19-year-old groom for Bill Davis.
“It was a Saturday afternoon after the races,” Coleman recalled. “I was putting away my only horse, Southside Pride. There was an alcohol-based liniment I was heating up for my horse’s feet. When I didn’t see a flame, I reached for the gallon container to pour more on. It exploded and blasted everywhere.”
Coleman said she wasn’t aware that she was on fire. All she remembers is seeing flames and being concerned about her horse.
“I could hear people yelling to call 911 and someone screaming, ‘no, take her now!’ I didn’t have a clue what was going on. Darren Howald grabbed a bucket of water and poured it over me; Carl Sibiga pushed me into a ditch and rolled me over in the dirt. Then Bill Davis came flying around the corner in his van, yelling for me to get in. I was more worried about a car crash than anything. It seemed we were going 200 miles an hour.”
Coleman suffered third degree burns to 22 per cent of her body, including both legs and her right arm. There were first degree burns to the cheeks of her face and neck.
She spent three months at Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria and underwent six skin grafts in intensive care. “She could have died,” said her father, Phil, who raced and trained horses with his wife, Linda, at Fraser Downs and Sandown Park.
Casie, her parents and boyfriend, Blake MacIntosh, will be at Fraser Downs on Remembrance Day afternoon – November 11 – to help raise funds for the Burn Unit at Royal Jubilee Hospital.
“I’ve gathered a lot of neat items for the auctions and raffles that will be happening on November 11,” Casie said. “I’m so looking forward to seeing my old racing friends and schoolmates.”
(With files from Fraser Downs)
C.Renon It is acts such as
C.Renon It is acts such as this that show the public the great sport and great people that are involved in it!
Congratulations Casie on
Congratulations Casie on giving back to the commumity. A very worthwhile gesture to re-pay the kinbdness of strangers, who then became friends.