By Marcus Townend for the Daily Mail
Published: 22:35 GMT, 3 March 2019 | Updated: 22:56 GMT, 3 March 2019
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Harriet Tucker feels she has a massive factor in her favour when she tries to win the Foxhunters Chase for the second year running at Cheltenham Festival.
‘I’ve got two arms instead of one,’ says the 23-year-old with a smile that she can now conjure thanks to a happy and ultimately pain-free ending to her remarkable story.
Tucker was a little-known amateur jockey going into last year’s Festival. She took centre stage not just for winning the race that follows the Cheltenham Gold Cup, but for doing it with a dislocated right shoulder.
Harriet Tucker wants to win Foxhunters Chase for second year running at Cheltenham Festival
Remarkably, it was an injury she had been living with since a fall in 2017. Tucker was told another bad fall on her damaged shoulder would end her riding aspirations.
She returns to the most prestigious meeting in jump racing having gone through a career-saving operation that had no guarantee of success.
Twelve months ago, Tucker rode the Paul Nicholls-trained Pacha Du Polder to her biggest win.
‘Jumping the fourth-last fence, I started pushing Pacha,’ she said. ‘He was getting a bit closer and I thought, “This is good, we are going to get placed’’. Jumping the last it was thinking, “Oh My God, we are going to do this’’.
‘And then my shoulder came out and I was screaming at him to just keep going. We were bobbing along and I couldn’t use my whip because my arm was busted.
‘My shoulder used to dislocate and I could put it back in. When it came out during the race, I was trying to roll my shoulder
