Meet the bravest horse in racing

Legislate will doddle the Queen's Plate in Cape Town tomorrow. So say the pundits, adding that Louis The King and Futura might put up good fights but are no match for the Durban July champ.

So why look any further into the nine-horse lineup? Well, because in there you'll find a real winner - a remarkable story of bravery and spirit.

Shadowing the 1/2 favourite Legislate every step of the way at Kenilworth will be an older, wiser stablemate called Jet Explorer - currently quoted at 20/1. Trainer Justin Snaith might well believe Legislate is his best chance of winning the race, but I'll bet that, deep down, he's rooting for his long shot.

Jet Explorer beat long odds just to be alive, and to be racing in the prestigious Queen's Plate seven months after a ghastly injury is pretty miraculous.

In June 2014, galloping around the turn in the Gold Challenge at Clairwood in Durban, Jet Explorer clipped hooves with another runner and crashed to the turf, jaw first. It looked a catastrophic fall and Snaith found himself sprinting hell-for-leather from the grandstand towards his stricken charge. A superfit runner, the trainer covered 800m to the scene of the accident in a flash and found jockey Richard Fourie in agony with a broken shoulder and Jet Explorer standing dazed, his jaw askew.

"Unusually, the horse didn't bolt once he got to his feet," says Jonathan Snaith, assistant trainer and brother. "That might have saved him. He recognised Justin immediately and looked at him as if to say: 'Help me!'"

Help him Justin did, calming the creature, getting him back to the stables and calling trusted vet Ralph Katzwinkel. The doc was actually at Clairwood, having watched two of his own horses run first and second in an earlier race.

"The horse was distressed and I couldn't examine his mouth there," recalls Katzwinkel.

"But I saw a fracture, thought it was just one piece broken, and told them I could fix it."

But after Jet Explorer had been rushed to Summerveld Equine Hospital and been X-rayed it was clear the jaw was smashed to smithereens - multiple fractures on both mandible lower jawbone and maxilla upper.

"We couldn't give him a general anaesthetic so soon after galloping; and recovering consciousness would have been very dangerous for him with such an unstable breakage. So we operated with him conscious, standing in a crush (a restraint apparatus)," says Katzwinkel.

The vet needed all the experience and expertise of his 34 years in the game, working like an engineer - in three dimensions, up, down, laterally - wiring the shattered bones and teeth back together and anchoring them to the back molars.

"It was a bit like building an inverted suspension bridge out of wire basket-weave. Another major concern was infection, as the fractures were full of grass and sand, so we had to keep washing out the mouth."

While all this was going on, Jet Explorer was conscious, though sedated and full of painkiller. "He stood there exceptionally bravely," says Katzwinkel. "He is amazingly tough; a bull of a horse."

Jonathan concurs: "How he made it, no one knows. I don't think any other horse would have had the will to live through that."

Within a day Jet Explorer was eating, and within two months the wiring was removed and he went home and back into training at the Snaiths' Cape Town base. He has raced three times since, finishing a close second in his last start, in the Jet Master Stakes, which is named after his sire.

"He's an all-time favourite in our yard," says Jonathan.

"A friendly, loving horse; but with plenty of spark - he'll give you a nip if you're not careful."

And his chances in the Queen's Plate?

"He is doing so well. It'll be hard to beat Legislate, but he will run very, very well."

That's from the horse's mouth.