Three months after the spill that almost paralyzed him, Stephane Bouchard is driving again. It’s his car that he’s driving, not horses, but it’s still a big step for the 50-year-old Quebec native who, since 2013, has made his the standardbred track in Saratoga, N.Y., his base of operations.
"They took the neck and body brace off last week, after 11-and-a-half weeks, replacing it with a smaller one that allows me to drive my car,” Bouchard said from home this week. “I got my freedom back."
What he doesn’t have back, and may never get back fully, is the ability to move his head from side to side. Bouchard landed on his head after being catapulted from the sulky in a spill at Saratoga Harness on June 22 and broke a vertebra in his neck. He can move his head up and down, but has been told he’s suffered a significant and permanent loss of sideways motion, which makes a return to the sulky as a driver unlikely.
“Things had been going well, I was busy and in good shape and looking forward to the (New York) sires stakes season, and then from one day to the next, there’s a chance you’ll never race again. I don’t want to put a cross on it yet, there’s always hope, but you also have to be realistic. You need to be able to turn your whole body. My doctor called it a ‘life-changing injury’. It's not easy to take, but life goes on. I’m going to concentrate on the training side. I’ve been going to the barns every morning for about a month and a half, not jogging obviously, but washing the horses, helping out in other ways,” said Bouchard, who has 8,589 career victories as a driver.
Just two weeks prior to the accident, he made his first appearance at a Quebec racetrack in more than decade and finished second to Louis-Philippe Roy in the Hippodrome 3R drivers’ tournament.
Bouchard and wife Eve Bergeron have a three-horse stable that has been pivotal in helping them weather this difficult summer.
Bold Dresser, a four-year-old trotting mare bought three weeks before the spill, had six wins and a second in seven subsequent starts with Dan Cappello driving. American Wiggle, a three-year-old pacer they co-own, has collected $62,918 on the New York Sire Stakes circuit. Air Dynamic, a five-year-old trotter Bouchard bought privately the day before he went down, has a pair of wins, including a score for driver Brian Cross on July 14 that Bouchard witnessed in his first visit to the track after leaving the hospital.
“That was the first time I’d seen him. I was in the hospital when he got here from Toronto,” Bouchard said. “All in all, we had a good summer with our horses. It’s encouraging, because we’re focusing on that. We don’t really have any choice.”
(A Trot Insider Exclusive by Paul Delean)