Behind The Scenes: Robson hoping for February comeback.

Byline: Tom O'Ryan

SPARE a thought for top amateur rider Pauline Robson, who, having been sidelined since a crashing fall on the Flat at Hamilton in mid-June, is now facing the prospect of surgery to mend the damage done to the main ligament in her knee.

"It's the sort of injury a lot of footballers and skiers get," says Robson, as she prepares to go under the surgeon's knife at Newcastle's Nuffield Hospital on September 5 before a lengthy period of convalescence.

"Realistically, it takes six months, but I want to do it in record time," she says. "Niall Quinn was back playing football in four months after an identical operation, and I'm aiming to be back race-riding by February. It's down to me, really, because the crucial thing with this type of surgery is the amount of physio you do afterwards. The harder you work, the quicker you'll come right."

Robson, who, with her partner, former jump jockey David Parker, runs a livery yard at Cap Heaton, just north of Newcastle, is also a pretty shrewd handler of point-to-pointers. And, as she looks forward to training six "really nice horses" this winter, it is with fingers tightly crossed that she hopes the foot-and-mouth epidemic does not spoil that side of the business for the second successive year.

More immediately, frustration threatens to be her biggest enemy.

"I'll be on crutches for three weeks after the operation and, although it'll probably be near to Christmas before I can ride in any capacity, I'll be able to muck out and groom, clip, and do lots of other things around the yard, so I won't be idle," she explains, before dwelling on the irony of the after-effects of parting company with the sprinter Tong Road after he'd clipped the heels of another runner.

"I was concussed in the fall, and although my knee was swollen, I didn't think too much about it at the time. It's only since it hasn't responded to some intensive physio that I've been forced to get to the bottom of the problem.

"As it turns out," she adds, "I'd have been back quicker if I'd broken my knee!"