A little more than six years ago, Robin Clayton did not think she would ever ride again. A terrible car accident left her with serious damage to lumbar vertebrae in her back. Despite surgery, the pain was so bad she could not walk or even stand.

An avid horsewoman who bought her first pony before she was teenager, Clayton was, at the time of the accident, only a few years into enjoying her first off-track thoroughbred, Sizzling Hot, who raced for one of the world’s leading owners and breeders, Frank Stronach. The son of Friendly Lover showed promise as a two-year-old in 2000, picking up purse shares in several stakes races and winning a maiden allowance.

The gelding began to have physical issues, however, and he slid down the class ladder before emerging from a race at Aqueduct racetrack in New York in 2001 with a condylar fracture in one his legs. Like Clayton, Sizzling Hot also had surgery to insert screws to fix the break and he found his way into the LongRun Thoroughbred Retirement program based out of Woodbine Racetrack.

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