At the time of writing, Henry Brooke lies in third place in the 2024/25 National Hunt Jockeys’ Championship, having ridden 21 winners from 99 rides at a distinctly healthy strike rate of 21%. Indeed, the former Champion Conditional Jockey has established himself as one of the leading riders in the North of England, but it would be fair to say that he has experienced more than his fair share of ups and downs on recent years.
On October 8, 2016, Brooke suffered a broken collarbone, nine broken ribs and a collapsed lung after his mount, Old Storm, fell at the second fence in a novices’ chase at Hexham. He was treated by medical staff at the course before being transferred, by air ambulance, to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, where he was briefly placed into an induced coma. Four years later, in December 2020, Brooke revealed how close he had come to being paralysed in an apparently ‘routine’ fall while riding work for Oliver Greenall at Stockton Hall Farm in Malpas, Cheshire the previous month. A susequent hospital check-up revealed that he had, in fact, fractured five vertebrae, three in his neck and two in his back. Multiple fractures in his hand, which required surgery and rehabilitation, served as a further setback in 2023, but Brooke has become renowned for his bouncebackability.
On February 27, 2021, just three months after suffering the aforementioned serious neck injury, Brooke won the Eider Chase at Newcastle Sam’s Adventure, trained by Brian Ellison, a victory that left him, by his own admission, ‘a bit lost for words’. Following another victory, on White Rhino at Cheltenham on December 15, 2023, he twice broke down in tears on live television following the death of his previous mount, Gesskille, on the cross-country course at Prestbury Park.
