Most of you will know George Baker very well through the work he does for us, as well as when he was riding for us a lot before his awful accident in St Mortiz back in 2017. Prior to his accident, George was a big part of our team as our main 'go-to' Jockey and we had great success together. His career was going from strength to strength and it was cruelly brought to an abrupt end with a horrific fall in a race on the ice. Typically of George, he see's himself as lucky rather than unlucky and having seen him in hospital in London when he was rehabilitating from his head injury, he has done so incredibly well to get back to where he is. For him to be running a half marathon is nothing short of a miracle given that he had to teach himself to walk again after this accident. George has worked incredibly hard to get to where he is today and has remained a huge part of our team at Kingsdown helping me enormously with race-planning, Jockey bookings and being a sounding board for me to run ideas past. George has been a great friend of mine for many years and I am immensely proud of him for what he has achieved.
He is now undergoing this challenge to raise money for another friend in Graham Lee who had a horrendous accident at Newcastle last November. Graham’s horse stumbled coming out of the stalls and he took what looked a very innocuous fall but landed badly breaking his neck and is now paralysed from the neck down. I saw Graham at the Injured Jockey’s fund 60th anniversary celebration and much like George he is being incredibly brave and has done amazingly well to recover as much and as quickly as he has. Graham has got some enormous challenges ahead of him and needs as much financial support as he can get. Although not as close to Graham as I am to George, Graham rode for us a lot at one stage and memorably rode Bushcraft and Betty The Thief to victory in a memorable 5 timer we had back in 2015.
Here is the link to the Just Giving page below. Graham, George and myself would be very grateful for any contribution that you feel you can make and is appropriate. Neither George or Graham would appreciate me asking for money which is a testament to the men that they are. Any help at all is enormously appreciated.
https://www.justgiving.com/page/george-baker-1719491519404?utm_medium=fundraising&utm_content=page%2Fgeorge-baker-1719491519404&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=pfp-share