Career
He sustained a serious back injury and a broken neck after a fall at the 2013 Cheltenham Festival which left him paralysed and admitted him to a wheelchair. McNamara partnered with Teaforthree to secure victory in the Diamond Jubilee National Hunt Chase at the 2012 Cheltenham Festival having been the 5-1 favourite. Back injury and paralysis
The jockey, from Limerick, was badly hurt when Galaxy Rock, trained locally in Gloucestershire by Jonjo O"Neill, fell at the first fence in the 2013 Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir Challenge Cup.
The fall fractured McNamara"s C3 and C4 vertebrae.
McNamara was flown to Frenchay Hospital in Bristol and was initially kept in an induced coma after recovering from neck surgery. He was the first jockey to have been paralysed on riding at a British racecourse since Wayne Burton suffered a serious head injury in a fall in Exeter in March 2008.
In June 2014, McNamara returned home to Ireland in a wheelchair 15 months after his horror fall at Cheltenham.
