A JOCKEY nicknamed “miracle girl” has bravely posed for photos showing her injuries from a fall that almost killed her.
Hugely popular Leah Kilner had the racing world praying for her after she suffered a devastating mid-race fall last month.
Leah, 24, smashed into the turf head-first and was placed in a coma while being rushed to hospital.
Despite life-threatening injuries she incredibly managed to pull through – with doctors in Australia labelling her “miracle girl“.
But the healing process, both mentally and physically, has only just begun.
The visible side-effects of her brush with death include being confined to a wheelchair for much of the day.
And she fears losing sight in one of her eyes as a consequence of the incident at Grafton racecourse in New South Wales.
Brave Leah told Racenet: “I have started remembering things since the fall.
“I could have died. To see where I am now, it’s still hard to believe.
“I can get out of my wheelchair and go for a small walk and I can write and talk. It’s a big thing.
“No one ever wants to put their parents through what I’ve put mine through.
“They are hoping my eye is going to open up, but whether the vision is there or not I don’t know.
“I don’t know whether I will be able to see out of that eye. Even my good eye, because it’s working twice as hard, the vision is getting worse.
“I get a lot of tingling sensations down my left side. I don’t know how long I will be in the wheelchair for.”
Leah described the moment she woke up thinking the pain was so intense it felt like she had been in a car crash.
Remarkably, rather than put the whole thing behind her, Leah says she’d like to see the incident back “to believe it actually happened”.
As for getting on a racehorse again, she said it is simply too early to tell what the future holds.
And even if she wanted to, she would first have to convince her parents it’s a good idea.
She added: “God knows how my mum would feel now if I rode again. Dad is a horse trainer and he never wanted me to be a jockey.
“I had to beg and beg and when I turned 18 I said, ‘I’m going to be a jockey or I’m going somewhere else’.
“Because dad didn’t want me to go anywhere else, he taught me how to ride, I bet he is regretting his decision now.”
