Fitzgerald's Career Hangs in Balance

Mick Fitzgerald, injured in a fall from L'Ami early in Saturday's Grand National, faces an uphill struggle to return to the saddle after undergoing an eight-hour operation on his neck on Sunday. Josh Apiafi, the chief executive of the Professional Jockeys' Association, said yesterday another operation was likely but that there had been "no talk" of retirement for the 37-year-old rider.

Fitzgerald, who had also taken a heavy fall in Friday's Topham Chase, was sidelined for four months with a neck injury following a spill in July 2005. He announced he would retire at last year's Grand National meeting but subsequently had a change of heart. Yesterday he was reported to be in a "comfortable condition" after the operation at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital to realign three vertebrae and two discs in his neck.

"He is reported to have come through the operation well and also has movement in his limbs," said Apiafi. "It has been a long ordeal for Mick and he may have to have another operation. Neck injuries are always serious but there has been no talk of retirement - the main thing is to get him upright again."

Dr Michael Turner, the British Horse racing Authority's chief medical officer, will have the final say should Fitzgerald wish to carry on race-riding. "We are all hoping Mick can get back to normal and come back," he said yesterday. "But at this stage it is impossible to speculate.

"In medical terms what I have heard of Mick's injuries doesn't actually mean a lot. The likelihood is it is some kind of fusion, similar to Tony McCoy's injury but higher up," added Turner, who passed McCoy fit after the champion jockey returned from a back injury last month. "Hopefully Mick can also go into a period of rehab and then quickly return to normal," said Turner.

Jockey Paddy Brennan, a faller at the fence after Fitzgerald, spoke yesterday of his alarm as he saw Aintree staff preparing to divert the oncoming National field around the injured jockey.

"I could hear the horses coming and I saw that they were putting up the signs on the fence to go around him," he said, "and that's when I started running, because there's no way that was going to work. It's the National and there are loose horses. Maybe if he was on the inside or the outside there'd be something they could do but he was right in the middle and it was not a nice place to be stuck.

"Fortunately they were able to get him off the course in time. But you can't always move a jockey."

Andrew Tulloch, the clerk of the course at Aintree, conceded that the nature of the National fences leaves little scope for diverting runners completely around the obstacles. "It's something that we keep under review and will continue to do so," he said. "But they are very wide fences, double the width and more of normal steeplechase fences."

While Aintree's position in the racing calendar is assured, steps to reduce fixtures at the bottom end of the scale were outlined yesterday when the British Horse racing Authority released its findings of their strategic review of the fixture list, first commissioned in May 2007.

Recommendations for 2009 include winter evening meetings to be reduced and fixture-free Sundays introduced, with the development of a mechanism that will prevent horses rated 40 or below from being eligible to run in Flat races.

Morag Gray, independent director of the BHA, said: "There was an overwhelming message that we have reached a turning point in terms of quality versus quantity and the many downsides that this is having on our sport."