“It was proper throw up sort of material… on the Sunday morning of Kentucky, I needed help to get out of bed,” says Tim Price as he describes the pain of pushing through riding at two five-stars this spring with a broken collarbone.
The accident happened on the Saturday before Defender Kentucky Three-Day Event week, when Tim was competing four four-star horses at Oudkarspel in the Netherlands, with the intention of giving them a little warm-up run before he headed away for a couple of weeks.
“I was biking back in all of my cross-country kit and the bag of studs was hanging on my handlebars. It swung out and caught around one of those temporary fences and just yanked the handlebars to the left.”
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Tim continues: “The bike and I went down very quickly onto my right shoulder and I knew straight away, rolling around on the ground, crunch, crunch, and a lot of pain – and I could not believe what just happened.
“I do some silly things to hurt myself, not always off a horse, just some silly moments – perhaps when I was a bit younger – but this was just a total accident and a very untimely one.”
Tim’s two rides for Kentucky, Global Quest and Vitali, had landed in the USA 24 hours earlier.
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“You have so many quids in when you’ve got horses in America, I just felt like I needed to do what I could do to get there,” says Tim.
“That involved sweet talking the local hospital to get me into surgery that Saturday night, to get a plate or two put in my clavicle to give it some strength. He was a really, really switched-on surgeon who understood what I was trying to achieve when I told him that I need to get on a plane the next day – which actually became the day after to give a bit of time after surgery.”
Tim was halfway round the Kentucky cross-country course on his first horse Global Quest, at Pete’s Hollow (fence14abc) at the top of the course, when the fix to his collarbone came apart.
“It was quite a moment on the course when it did happen – it was a fantastic sparkling sensation of pain,” says Tim.
Somehow, Tim managed to get home on Global Question, pilot Vitali round the cross-country clear with a few time-faults and showjump both horses on Sunday “basically with a broken collarbone because the two plates were rattling in there and so were the bones”.
He says: “It’s not something I ever want to repeat, that kind of feeling. I know childbirth is a very difficult thing for women but I reckon this is possibly up there in the pain department.
“It was terrible. It was a little bit mind over matter. It all happened so quick – the injury and then getting to America and then getting on with it. I just tried to tough it out – there’s only a certain amount of painkillers you can take through a competition, of course, and I just wanted to be normal, whereas by Sunday I wasn’t normal anymore.
“I had to be very soft in my contact and both horses showjumped clear, including Vitali’s first ever showjumping clear at five-star level, so that was interesting – there were some learnings to take away from it.”
Tim Price: a second collarbone surgery
Tim returned to the UK after Kentucky, but ended up going back to the same surgeon in the Netherlands for his second operation.
“It was a bit hard to convince the NHS to put me back on the road with the purpose of going to another big event so I went back to the guy that was already invested,” he says.
“We swapped WhatsApp numbers and he stayed in touch with me out in the US and I told him, ‘Look, I think it’s falling apart’, and he said, ‘Well, I can fit you in for surgery on Monday of Badminton week.’
“So off I trundle back over there, and he took those two plates out and had been conjuring up another plan – fortunately he’s a man for whom the more complex the surgery, the better and so he revelled in the challenge.
“He put me in a different plate set-up with a wire that pulls the plate down. It sounds all a bit funky in there and I can’t wait to get it out one day when it’s all healed.”
Tim Price and Falco on the way to second at Badminton 2026.
(Image credit: Peter Nixon)
Tim rode “another very old friend”, Falco, at Mars Badminton Horse Trials and said he “tippy toed” into the week, prepared to withdraw if it wasn’t possible and riding with his weakened shoulder front of mind this time.
“I cross-country schooled him before I went for the surgery, which wasn’t so comfortable, but I went and I rode him softly in the rein, just asking him, ‘Are you okay with this kind of feeling?’ And he seemed to be really good and he filled me with a lot of confidence that this was the right thing for him, so then we just needed to work out if it was the right thing for me.”
Wearing a good supporting vest to keep his shoulder in position, Tim managed to ride through Badminton week, keeping his shoulder plate in place, and finished second.
Hear more about what led to Vitali’s incredible showjumping clear and find out all about Badminton runner-up Falco losing his top front teeth on episode 177 of TheHorse & HoundPodcast.
Pippa is a true eventing geek and has been H&H’s eventing editor since 2005. She has first-hand experience of competing up to British Eventing intermediate and international CCI2*-L level, and has worked in the industry on a top event yard. Pippa enjoys nothing more than immersing herself in the sport at the highest level, reporting from the five-stars and international championships, including the Olympics.
