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This article was first published in the Racing Post on July 6, 2013
During the first of Jonjo O Neill s remarkable comebacks it was his leg he and the doctors were trying to save. During the second, in 1986, six years after the freak accident at Bangor that snapped his right leg so brutally it felt just like a bag of gravel , the stakes were somewhat higher. Cancer had struck. This time they were trying to save O Neill s life.
The darkness of those storm clouds of yesteryear should not be too easily lost in the sunshine of O Neill s smile. The 61-year-old s beaming face under the top hat watching Well Sharp come home at Royal Ascot and the smiling man in a suit giving credit to jockey Graham Lee after Tominator s astonishing final-furlong surge to win the Northumberland Plate last Saturday seemed to indicate a man at peace with himself.