Cheltenham history-maker Bryony Frost to miss Aintree after breaking collarbone

Bryony Frost, whose victory on Frodon at Cheltenham last week made headline news, will miss Aintree after it was revealed that she broke a collarbone in a fall at Southwell on Monday.

From a racing family and the daughter of a jockey Frost, 23, will know only too well the vicissitudes of National Hunt racing when you can be on cloud nine one minute and picking yourself up off the dirt the next.

The jockey was sore after her fall and visited a specialist in South Wales on Wednesday, two days later.

“I went to see an extremely good specialist in Cardiff where my x-ray results have shown that I’ve fractured my clavicle (collar bone),” she said on her Matchbook blog yesterday.

She added: “I suffered a fracture previously which healed well under pressure. My body’s response from that fracture makes me positive for when I go back for my assessment in a fortnight’s time and a swift return.

“I’ve been taken aback by all the support I’ve received since Monday. The racing world is an extremely caring one. Although we are all strangers within it we become a family when we need each other and that’s the beauty of it.”

Aintree will miss her involvement because she has become the sport’s poster girl after victories in the Caspian Caviar Gold Cup, Cotswold Chase and Ryanair on Frodon this season.

Last year she rode Milansbar into fifth behind Tiger Roll in the Grand National but the horse needs 19 above him in the handicap to drop out if he is to get a run on April 6. She will, however, not miss Frodon because Paul Nicholls confirmed yesterday he is definitely not going to Aintree.

Collar-bones, depending on the fracture, are the most common injures sustained by jockeys. They usually take anything from a fortnight to a month to mend. Occasionally jockeys have them pinned or even parts of them removed while AP McCoy, famously, ignored them and kept riding. But ordinary mortals find it hard riding horses with a wing down.