EVERY best wish for a speedy recovery to Co Wexford show jumper and young horse producer Marti Rudd, who will be on the sidelines for a considerable time, having broken her neck while schooling at home last Wednesday week.

“It was a simple enough fall as the horse just tripped on landing over a fence,” the mother of two told the Irish Horse World on Tuesday. “I’ve fractured my C1 and am in a brace, but I have to go back to the hospital next week; hopefully, if it hasn’t moved, I won’t need to have an operation. However, even then, I will be three months in a brace and, with physio, et cetera, after that, it’s going to be a long road to recovery.

“Unfortunately, the girl who was working for us left on the Sunday before I fell and we are full up to the neck with horses. After a family holiday for much of December, Tomás (Doyle, her husband) and I spent January sourcing horses, both in this country and from sales abroad, and they started arriving here over the past two weeks. Tomás is going to be kept busy looking after me, the children (Daisy, who is two and a half, and 10-month-old Ollie) and all the horses, so it looks like we will have to forget about travelling to Spain for the Sunshine Tour as we had planned. I had been especially looking forward to competing Monbeg Sapphire, the mare on whom I won the six-year-old HSI studbook series final at Tatts last July. As it will be the end of the year before I get back riding, she would have a wasted season, so I’ll probably sell her now, which hadn’t been the plan.”

In addition to some excellent results show jumping last year, Marti and Tomás had a good end to the year on the sales scene as, under their Monbeg Sport Horses’ banner, they sold six horses at the Goresbridge Go For Gold Sale in November including the two top-priced lots, the four-year-old Monbeg Condor (€87,000) and the year-younger Private Monbeg (€60,000).