Good Grace & Nice Grass

JESSICA OWERS

Tye Angland survived the unthinkable in 2018, but disability hasn’t overtaken him. Two years on from the race fall that changed his life, he talks racing and television, and his penchant for a fine patch of turf.

Wantabadgery is a little way east of Wagga Wagga, population 187 at the last count, a township tucked into sheep and cattle country. It was here, in 1879, that bushranger Captain Moonlite bailed up the locals and was arrested, an event that resulted in his hanging at Darlinghurst Gaol. For a long time, it was Wantabadgery’s only claim to fame. But then Tye Angland came along.

“I was 12 when we moved from Wagga to Wantabadgery,” Angland says. “Twenty-five acres, a reserve down by the river where we used to take the horses. That was it. We lived a country life in a small country town.”

Tye Angland is 30 years old, with a fine humour and country-boy manners. He left Wantabadgery during school holidays one year, headed to Hawkesbury riding polocrosse, and broke into the Sydney jockey ranks. Young and lean, he spent the next 14 years rising to the top of the Australian riding ranks. Angland was Sydney and state Champion Apprentice, boasting one of the best amateur seasons ever in New South Wales. Overall as a jockey, he pegged 995 winners for 11 group one wins aboard the likes of Black Piranha, Gust Of Wind, Heavens Above, Alverta, Ace High and Trapeze Artist.

It was a life less imagined for Angland, who had spent a childhood dreaming of the bull-riding circuit. “I had always been involved in horse sports,” he says, “but my focus was rodeos, and my dream was to become a champion bull rider. Even when I headed up to

Hawkesbury, I had no idea about racing. I’d been riding polocrosse for New South Wales, and I was spotted by Glenn Frazer, who got me in for an apprenticeship with his brother, trainer Garry Frazer. And that was how the race riding began.”

From the age of 15, Angland was a force in the Sydney jockey room, a natural horseman with a country pedigree and impeccable balance. He started his career at 45 kilograms and, like most, he got taller and heavier. In 2010 he migrated to Hong Kong, where he remained for four successful years. Thereafter he was in Sydney, until a brief return to Hong Kong in December 2018 changed his life forever.

It was the week before the Hong Kong International Races, and Angland had almost completed the card on a Sunday’s racing at Sha Tin. In the ninth race, his mount, gelding Go Beauty Go, stumbled out of the gate and pitched Angland out of the saddle. He admits it was a freak accident, one that he would walk away from nine times out of 10. But that night he didn’t walk away, and he didn’t walk again.

Angland suffered a spinal injury that was both debilitating and life altering. He was flown home to Sydney a fortnight after the fall and has since been on a long road to recovery, with surgeries and rehab now part of his everyday. But he is amazingly stoic. Angland talks about the accident and his injuries in good humour, and enjoys the little people in his life poking at him, asking him if he can feel this or that. “The kids love it,” he says, “they find it interesting. They don’t see it as anything else.”

It’s a credit to Angland that he is positive and pragmatic. “Just before the accident I felt that the last two seasons were really getting a roll on,” he says. “I’d been involved with Trapeze and Ace High, and they were the two standouts of my career and were really getting me going. The TJ Smith with Trapeze was a real highlight for me, if I had to pick one out.” The colt blew past Redzel that day in 2018, only half-an-hour after Angland had lost a protest over the Australian Derby result.

As a four-time group one winner, Trapeze Artist retired to Widden Stud in 2019, winner of over $5.5 million in prizemoney. Some months later, Angland made the long journey to the Widden Valley to visit his old friend, a meeting that resulted in a very famous photograph. “I don’t have any malice towards horses after what happened to me,” Angland says. “It’s just one of those things. We have three children, and sometimes don’t have time to sit down and think things over too much.”

Angland is married to Erin, daughter of trainer Garry Frazer. It was how they met, Angland riding his apprenticeship at Frazer’s Hawkesbury yard, and Erin driving the lithe young jockey to the Saturday races. It was, arguably, an odd pairing. “I’m terrified of horses,” Erin says. “I always have been. I won’t have anything to do with them. Even the day we went to visit Trapeze, I was a nervous wreck.”

Erin is a steady hand and brilliant mind in Angland’s life. She has tackled his medical issues with interest, soaking up the complex biology of his injuries and

medication, and learning as much about them as she can. The couple has three young children, Alexis, Addison and Rylan, and Angland says the kids will grow up with an exceptional respect for difference. “Lexi sees disability now as an everyday thing, and that’s amazing,” he says. “She saw a woman recently with one arm, and a guy who had lost a leg, and it just wasn’t a big deal.”

It’s hard to imagine the Anglands have endured so much (the couple also lost unborn twin girls in May 2014). They are cheerful and upbeat and, even on social channels, Angland is playful. It took the best part of a year for him to return to social media, during which time Erin posted updates on his health and progress to a very interested audience. “The support was overwhelming,” Angland says. “Even now, probably the only thing that gets me emotional was the kindness people showed.”

Within a year of his accident, the former jockey was getting on with things. “I think your mindset is a lot stronger than a set of legs,” he said at the time. Angland teased everyone with claims to a new lawnmowing business, replete with a modified super-mower delivered to him from friends at Country Clipper Australia. “I love my lawns,” Angland says, and Erin admits that he’ll often make her pull over when driving to look at someone’s grass. “I’ve always been a bit of a green thumb, and it was something I really wanted to continue doing, to continue mowing the lawns.”

And he did. Angland formed a relationship with his Sydney builder and cuts the lawns on neighbouring empty blocks. “They even gave me a company shirt,” he says, “but it’s purely a bit of fun.”

In October 2019, only 10 months after his fall and still deep in rehab, Angland debuted on Australian television when he co-hosted Channel 7’s free-to-air coverage on Epsom Day. It was a significant event for the racing industry, a statement of inclusivity that hadn’t been seen before. “Chris Symons came to see me at rehab one day, and slowly mentioned that he’d been talking to Jason Richardson, Bruce McAvaney and Andrew Hore-Lacy at the Channel7 racing team,” Angland recalls. “The seed had been planted, and when the time was right I gave Andrew a call, and that was how it started.”

Angland says he’s no form expert, and that, in the beginning, interviewing was totally different to getting interviewed. But it’s like anything, he says, it takes time to get comfortable in front of the camera. “Bruce had told me, just be yourself, don’t try to be anyone else. So I talk about the jockeys and how the races unfold, and with the relationships I have with the guys in the jockeys’ room, I think they want to build on that.”

Angland’s presence on television is a warm reminder that disability hasn’t stopped ability. “Tye is just an incredible character,” says Tony Crisafi, CEO of the NSW Jockeys’ Association. “He is still a director of the National Jockeys Trust, and he wants to be part of the industry, and still is. The amazing thing is, despite what he’s been through, Tye knows there’s worse off than him, and he’s doing something about that.”

The Anglands have worked consistently on the Team Tye Foundation, a charity they established in the wake of Angland’s accident. It aims to assist seriously injured people across the racing industry, from

ANGLAND HAS HAD EVERY EXCUSE TO STAY OUT OF THE SPOTLIGHT, BUT HE HASN’T. HE HAS EARNED THE RIGHT TO FEEL SORRY FOR HIMSELF, BUT HE DOESN’T. “HE’S ALWAYS BEEN LIKE THAT,” ERIN SAYS, “A GLASS HALF-FULL SORT OF PERSON.”

jockeys and track riders to barrier attendants. In late October, the charity received an enormous injection of both fund and focus when Godolphin mare Colette ran first past the post in the rich Golden Eagle at Rosehill Gardens. The charity share of the win was $410,000 and, because Colette was nominated to run on behalf of the Team Tye Foundation, it proved an immense occasion for the Anglands.

“We were so excited for Tye and Erin,” Crisafi says. “It was a big kick for their foundation, and it will do great things for jockeys. Kolding won the race in 2019 for the National Jockeys Trust, so it was an extra special result again this year. It’s hard, of course, to say that things are meant to happen, but that result for the Team Tye Foundation... it was meant to happen.”

The Anglands might confess to it being a good year, all things considered. They opened 2020 with a visit to

the Magic Millions Carnival in January, an annual event they have rarely missed. Angland has been a loyal and familiar character on the Gold Coast each January, riding in the polo, galloping in the Beach Run and booting home winners on Magic Millions Race Day. In 2017 he clattered home aboard 100/1 shot Flying Jess in the 3YO Guineas, and his visit this year was ambassadorial. “It was a little bittersweet,” he admits, “but it was still good to be there and be among it. The thing with the Magic Millions is that everyone wants to be there, and you feel so welcome.”

Those sentiments were returned to the Anglands in May 2018 when leading stud farms in Australia donated eight stallion nominations to the family. Each was auctioned in the Magic Millions auditorium, raising over $283,000 for Angland’s rehabilitation. At the time, only six months on from the accident, Erin

admitted it was difficult to be positive some days. “To have moments and people behind us like this is incredible,” she said.

Angland has had every excuse to stay out of the spotlight, but he hasn’t. He has earned the right to feel sorry for himself, but he doesn’t. “He’s always been like that,” Erin says, “a glass half-full sort of person.” The former jockey chuckles about turning down the ride on Winx in the 2015 Theo Marks, saying that’s just how it goes in this game, and he admits he is easily distracted, but spent time this year training a young Macaw to free-fly.

He won’t be defined by bad luck, or spend too much time thinking about it. In short, Tye Angland is a character, a man of good grace and good grass.