The 36-year-old doesn’t remember the fall, but he’s been told he hit the ground head first.

It was supposed to be a day just like every other. Mr Gibbs is a track rider at Queanbeyan, he trains horses preparing them to race.

On Thursday last week, he mounted a horse he knew to be quiet, not that something like that had bothered him before. He sat in the saddle riding short - “my legs were up around my ears” - and took the horse onto the track.

“As I started to go, he just took off for no reason,” Mr Gibbs said.

“It’s just one of those freak things that does happen with horses.”

The next thing Mr Gibbs remembers was being in the back of the ambulance, not being able to move his body. The track rider was due to be flown from Canberra to Sydney to be looked at by a spinal specialist that afternoon.

In a lucky escape, just hours after the fall Mr Gibbs had feeling return to his body. Slowly at first, but completely.

His emergency trip to a spinal specialist in Sydney was postponed as the numbness began to fade.

“I got the feeling back a little bit at a time,” he said.

“One of the nurses saw me move my fingers, and I didn’t realise I was moving my fingers. Then the movement just slowly came back.”

A week later, and Mr Gibbs was back on his feet, champing at the bit to get back on a horse.

“If the doctors would let me go back to riding now, I’d be back on a horse now,” he said.

Mr Gibbs, better known as Buckles to his friends for his tendency to wear American-style belt buckles, got his first pony at age seven.

He hasn’t lived without horses since. While he’s had a few injuries in his time, none came close to the most recent fall he had. 

“They say you’ve got to fall 99 times before you call yourself a rider,” he said.

Always seeing the silver lining, Mr Gibbs said while it was a shock, he’s now fully recovered.

“I’m alive, I’m healthy, I’m well.

“If anything does happen at least its around horses, something I love doing.”