Page 86 - Speedhorse June 2019

Steve won the 1983 TQHA Futurity at Trinity Meadows with
On A High, who went on to sire World Champion See Me Do It.
Steve with On A High after setting a New Track Record the 1984 National Stakes Invitation Championship Derby at Manor Downs.
Steve returns after winning the 1983 All American Futurity aboard On A High.
Three years prior to the accident, in 1983, he won the All American Futurity at 14-1 odds aboard
On A High.
THE LONG ROAD OF RECOVERY
After surgery, Harris was transferred to
a rehabilitation hospital in Denver. That September, in Ruidoso, the racing community put together a fundraiser and benefit auction on Harris’ behalf. Tens of thousands of dollars were raised, but Harris never saw a dollar of it.
“The guy that put the benefit on, that everybody gave their money to, he took every freaking bit of it and went to Mexico,” Harris said. “After about a year or two, they tracked him down and prosecuted him but he never had to pay any of it back. I had saved a lot of money. You know jockeys had insurance. It still wasn’t the same.”
More adversity followed when Harris and his wife divorced, but he kept moving forward, starting college at the University of Arkansas, graduating with a degree in agribusiness, and eventually, in 1995, landing an opportunity as a car salesman.
“That’s when I saw Daryl Hickman and his daughter at a wedding reception. I went to that.
On the day Harris sustained his injury at Blue Ribbon Downs, he had completed all of his assigned races. After winning six of 10 trials on the card for the Black Gold Futurity, one of the trainers asked Harris if he was willing to run once more on the card.
“I was already dressed [and] leaving and
he caught me at the door and said, ‘Stay and ride that thing for me,’” Harris recalled, noting he had won on the horse, Native Judge, in a previous start.
It was an 870-yard race, and Harris and his mount encountered trouble in the first turn.
“There was a horse on the inside of me, and instead of me dropping down . . . I hesitated
a little bit. I thought he might rear me, but he didn’t. He clipped my [horse’s] heels.”
Harris got thrown, and sent flying.
“I can remember it like it was yesterday,” he said. “I remember flying through the air thinking, this is gonna hurt. And then I was thinking when I hit and rolled I had dirt in
my mouth. That’s when I went to get up and I couldn’t move my legs. That there was the start. I felt a little pain, but not a whole lot right at that instant. Then when I looked, I couldn’t move my legs. I tried to grab with my hand and that didn’t do no good. Then I thought, man I’d just better be still, cause it started getting hard to breathe. I did crack some ribs. I broke some ribs. I just figured I was hurt pretty bad or needed to not be moving around.”
Harris’ instincts were right. He suffered spinal cord damage, in addition to damaging his seventh and eighth thoracic vertebrae, as well as the ribs attached to those vertebrae.
He never walked again.
Harris was transferred to the Washington Regional Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he underwent seven hours of surgery to remove bone fragments from his spinal cord. At the time, Harris’ father, a dentist named Boyd Harris, told a newspaper his son had “a 1000 to 1 chance that he might have some movement.”
84 SPEEDHORSE, June 2019