Milton Harris spends week in intensive care in Thailand

Popular trainer Milton Harris is set to be released from intensive care in Thailand after suffering a health scare.

The colourful Warminster handler enjoyed his best-ever season with 56 winners last term, four years after returning to the game he loves following a seven-year enforced absence due to bankruptcy.

The 63-year-old, who saddled the likes of Knight Salute to Grade One success in the 4-Y-O Juvenile Hurdle at Aintree last term, was taken ill last Monday after flying to Thailand for a scheduled golfing break.

He felt unwell soon after his arrival and was admitted to hospital with a pulmonary embolism, but the prognosis is better than at first feared.

On Monday, Katie Harrison, Harris’s secretary at the Sutton Veny yard, said: “He will be all right. He has had some good news in the past few hours.

“Communication has been a bit up and down with him. Basically, it was something to do with the flight itself and he had blood on his lungs.

“He will be fine and has a flight booked to come back in a few days.

“As soon as he got there he fell ill, but he sent me an update earlier today, saying, ‘Tell them I’m invincible. There are plenty of people worse off than me and I won’t be rolling over just yet – I’ll be back!’.”

Harris has suffered wretched luck over the past few days, with one of the yard’s leading hurdlers, Rosy Redrum, falling at the penultimate flight when making stealthy headway behind Luccia in the Listed Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle over an extended two miles at Newbury on Saturday.

The Mark and Maria Adams-owned four-year-old was taken to a nearby veterinary hospital for tests following her heavy fall.

However, Harrison said: “Rosy Redrum is OK. She is in hospital, it is all looking like muscle and ligament damage, but it is looking like she will be OK. The prognosis looks good for her.”