Many readers will remember Dai Tegg as the promising young rider who enjoyed a particularly fruitful association with Flakey Dove before his career was cut cruelly short by a brain haemorrhage at the age of only 26, just days before he was due to partner Richard Price’s smashing mare in the 1993 Champion Hurdle.
Flakey Dove didn’t win that one – she finished in mid-division behind Granville Again – but she was back again 12 months later when Mark Dwyer was on board for a famous defeat of Oh So Risky.
That must have been a very painful experience for Dai, who had hoped against hope to get back in the saddle. However, he has a permanent reminder of the good times in the form of a tattoo on his back, which Graham Lee can testify to after Jack Berry insisted Dai remove his shirt while on the IJF trip to Tenerife last November.
Dai’s hopes of working his way back to race fitness in order to one day resume his partnership with Flakey Dove gave him a target to aim for while in recovery, but he was just 6st 2lb when he left hospital and in any case a second operation to remove a blood clot on the brain ended any realistic hopes. He knew then what to expect when he travelled to London to be assessed by Dr Michael Turner for licensing purposes.
It’s been a rocky road since, but the IJF have been on hand to help throughout. He even has us to thank for meeting his long-time partner Anna Sansom, who is Chris Gordon’s travelling head girl, as the pair first met on an IJF trip to Malta 10 or 12 years ago.
Speaking six weeks or so after returning to work at the Meon Valley Stud, following time off to recover from having both hips replaced, Dai says: “I’m feeling a lot better since having my hips done. Richard Johnson and John Francome both had theirs replaced too, so that puts me in good company, but I didn’t want to be in their gang!
“I’d been in agony for quite a while and I was living on painkillers while walking the yearlings up to 13 miles a day and doing hard physical work like mucking out. When I first went to the doctor I was told it was a hernia, but I was hurting bad and I didn’t think it was that. Lucy (Charnock) got me in to see someone privately through the IJF and they said it’s not a hernia, it’s your hips.
“It was going to cost £13,000 a hip to have them replaced, and the IJF were prepared to step up for me. But we didn’t have to go private because the NHS knew they’d messed up, and I ended up having them done privately, but on the NHS as it were.
“The hips are good now and I’m going up to Oaksey House once a week for much needed physio, which is doing me a lot of good.”
Dai, who will be 60 in June, started pony racing with Tyrone Williams at the age of just 11 and left school at 15 to start an apprenticeship with Derek Haydn Jones before going on to Jenny Pitman and Bryn Palling. At the time of his brain haemorrhage he was getting good rides as second jockey to John Edwards behind Norman Williamson, and he was also riding nice winners regularly for the likes of Chris Broad, who had Mudahim and Kissane at the time, and Richard Lee.
When he recovered he ran pubs for a while and enjoyed it. He says: “I nearly bought The Horseshoe at Ledbury at one stage, but I got gazumped and had to go back to tenancies. I enjoyed that life though and if I’d had my own pub things might have been different.”
There have been some difficult times since but Dai is in a much better place now and acknowledges the importance of the support he has received from the IJF as an organisation, and in particular IJF Welfare Officers Clare Hill and now Lucy Charnock.
He says: “The Injured Jockeys Fund has been very good to me, and to Anna too. As I said, they’ve looked after me in financial ways when needed, they’ve provided therapy at difficult times, and now I’m getting regular phsyio through them. They have always been there, and without them I don’t know where I’d be.
“I wouldn’t have met Anna besides everything else!”
Lucy Charnock, IJF Welfare Officer.
Lucy Charnock has been Dai’s Almoner since 2021 She says:
Dai is a great example of someone who has engaged with all areas of IJF support over the years, as he’s received financial and medical support, pastoral assistance, has accessed mental health support through our collaboration with Sporting Chance, and has also accessed training and career advice through JETS . Recently we have been supporting him with his return to work after a long period of sick leave following two surgeries, providing practical assistance and support, liaising between him and his employer, and arranging physical rehabilitation at Oaksey House.
Dai’s injury has been life changing and he has benefitted from IJF support periodically since the haemorrhage, initially receiving help to manage financially in the early period of recovery and later when starting out on a new career as a publican. Dai’s physical and mental health has fluctuated through the years and, when things have been tough, he has found support in the IJF fold.
He is always keen to engage with our social events whenever possible and besides joining us regularly on the overseas holidays, he enjoyed our Christmas wreath making session last year, for example, where he surprised himself by discovering hidden artistic talents and making a lovely wreath which he was justly proud to display on the front door at home.
Dai knows we are always here for him if he needs us.