Campbell begins recovery

John Campbell has told Harness Tracks of America’s Stan Bergstein he expects to be sidelined several months as he recuperates from a broken left leg suffered in a race accident in the Breeders Crown eliminations at Woodbine last month. Campbell has undergone several operations since the spill, and is now back home in New Jersey after his most recent surgery that helped stabilize the broken tibia bone.

“The operation went OK and (the doctor) is very happy with the way he got it back together. There was extensive damage,” Campbell said in a webcast interview on HTA’s World In Harness. “It’s just a rehabilitation process that is going to take a number of months. It’s difficult to determine just how long I will be out at this point.”

Campbell, 51, said he has just begun the road to his sulky return, currently working on a machine six to seven hours a day at home that bends and straightens the shattered leg. He added he never saw Total Truth veer in and crash into Shark Gesture, the horse that went down and the one Campbell and his horse, Scootin Delight, tumbled over. He also said he has yet to see the video replay.

“Brian’s horse (Sears, driving Shark Gesture) dropped. I couldn’t tell what caused him to fall,” said Campbell. “I thought I could get my horse to the outside and when I grabbed the horse’s right line he just didn’t respond as well as I’d hoped.”

Campbell, the sport’s all-time leading money-winning driver with more than $240 million in purse earnings, is just 261 wins from reaching the 10,000 mark. He said that although he has some thoughts toward future retirement, he says that slowing down is an attitude he is not comfortable with.

“In my business you either drive or you don’t, and if you want to get the kinds of mounts that I’ve been accustomed to, you have to work and you have to work in the wintertime at the Meadowlands. There is no in between,” he said. “If you want to slow down, you can slow down, but you’ll be about stopped in no time.”

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