Peter Cook had been wasting for only about 20 minutes in the ACT Racing Club sauna when he clutched at his rapidly tightening chest and stumbled outside.
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At the time, Black Opal Stakes day in March, 1991, the champion jockey didn't realise the end of his illustrious riding career had just begun.
He'd already been in the saddle earlier in the day, and was in the sauna to hastily shed a few kilograms and make the weight for another of his mounts that afternoon.
A major artery collapsed which triggered a heart attack, destroying half of Cook's heart muscle.
''I struggled out and was calling for help and the doctors, and unfortunately no-one took me very serious,'' Cook recalled this week.
''It was 2½ hours before I got to the hospital and I lost 47 per cent of my heart muscle. Suffering muscle meltdown, I was admitted the last rites and wasn't expected to last the night.
''Somehow I survived it but the damage was done and it took me 12 months to get right.''
Legal proceedings followed as Cook embarked on a lengthy campaign fighting for jockeys' rights.
Almost 11 years after his heart was ripped apart Cook was awarded about $1.3 million in damages in his case against the ACT Racing Club. It provided a much-needed financial boost for the two-time Melbourne Cup winner but the physical and emotional scars of his heart attack remain very deep.
He unsuccessfully returned to the saddle after the incident, largely ignored by owners and trainers despite a career record boasting more than 1000 wins.
A ride at Rosehill in 1993 was the last straw for Cook which propelled his 26-year riding career into early retirement.
His mount Steel Harvest reared backwards and landed on top of the jockey, breaking his back for the fourth time. Had he not suffered the heart attack two years before and consequently been physically stronger, he most likely would have avoided serious injury.
''I just said, 'Well, that's it'. The hunger to reinstate myself is there but I'd be out another six or seven months with another broken back and I thought there's no point going on,'' he said. ''The mind was willing but the body was just in pieces. I was having mental problems at the time, drinking and depression and all that, I attempted suicide. I was very bitter at the way my career ended and it shouldn't have ended the way it did, but that's part of life. It'll catch you unaware and that's what happens.''
Cook, who has just helped to release his biography, Jockeying To The Top, lives in Queensland and still loves racing, but rarely gets to the track.
His heart, still beating more than 20 years after his fateful episode in the Canberra sauna, continues to weaken. As does his overall health.
Had he not been forced to leave the profession he began as a 16-year-old following in his father Bill's footsteps, who knows how many more group 1 wins he might have added to his vast collection.
COOK'S BEST RIDE
It was arguably aboard Kingston Town in the 1982 Cox Plate.
The champion horse was chasing a third-straight win in Australia's weight-for-age championship, and Cook was given the ride to replace suspended jockey Malcolm Johnston.
Early on Cook felt the horse was struggling and the feeling was broadcast to the nation via caller Bill Collins who, at the 400m mark, boldly declared ''Kingston Town can't win''.
''From the moment he left the barriers he didn't want to take very much part in the race at all,'' Cook said. ''Instinctively I pulled the whip on him and dropped several of them around him to make him change his mind to go on with the job. He was always in a very good position but always struggling to hold position and I was always forcing to keep the momentum up with him because the moment I relaxed on him he was going to pull out of it. To the normal eye you'd say he was a beaten horse, but he wasn't losing ground.''
As they rounded the turn, Cook pulled the horse wide and from there made easy work of the short straight. ''If I'd have got a squeeze or a bump or a slight check that would've been the end of it,'' Cook said. ''Fortunately I didn't receive any of that … once I got him three deep around the turn it was all over.
JOCKEYING TO THE TOP - The Story of Horseracing Legend Peter Cook, by David Brasch.