KATHRYN PRICE LEFT HER FAMILY on the grassy field bordering the track at Southwell racecourse in Nottinghamshire, England, for only a few minutes to visit the loo. Still in the grandstand when the Heron Maiden Handicap was about to begin at 3 p.m. on April 1, she decided to stop and watch the closed-circuit TV broadcast. Instead of a horse race, though, she witnessed a miracle.
As the horses lined up, the excited crowd unnerved the 4-year-old gelding Formidable Flame. Suddenly the horse threw his jockey and began bucking wildly, ultimately smashing through the fence that protects spectators. From her spot in the stands, Price, along with hundreds of other onlookers, watched in horror as the animal barreled into her fiancé, 25-year-old Derbyshire carpenter Paul Marshall, and his mother, Maureen, 52, knocking them over. Then the whirling horse upended the stroller that held Kathryn and Paul's 2-month-old son, Lee Marshall. "It was terrifying," Price, 22, was quoted as saying in The Express. "I thought my baby was dead. " As-toundingly, though, the horse's impact only served to propel little Lee out of harm's way; he tumbled from the stroller unhurt. "He cried for a few seconds but hardly seemed to have a mark on him," Paul said, according to British press reports."If a hoof had come down a foot either way, Lee would definitely be dead."
Flame and his jockey were also unharmed, though they didn't race. The next day the family went to see the horse in Newmarket, Suffolk. "They fed him mints and stroked him," said his trainer Willie Musson, who, with the help of another trainer, had caught and calmed Flame. As for Lee, he behaved with his usual nonchalance. "He had a sleep and a little cry," said Musson. "He was probably just hungry."
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