CHRISTIAN WILLIAMS can remember little about the moment of impact, but he can tell you the date and the place. September 3, 2006, Worcester. One second he was pushing relentlessly into the sport’s elite, the next he was pinned to the turf by an eight-year-old handicap chaser called The Spacer.

Jockeys instinctively know the worst. Ten days in intensive care and three major operations later, Williams was able to contemplate a normal existence, albeit with tissue from his left leg grafted onto the severed auxiliary nerve in his right shoulder and two pieces of metal pinning together his jaw and his eye socket. Unfortunately, no jump jockey craves a normal existence. “Deep down, I knew I might never ride again,” said Williams. “I remember going in to see the specialist and he wouldn’t say anything. I got the impression the chances weren’t great, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask the question.”

No jockey can anticipate the onset of a new year or reflect on the achievements of the old with more satisfaction than the 23-year-old Welshman. At the start of 2007, the odds were against him riding again. A year on, he is approaching the 30-winner mark. More significantly, his recent successes have included a feature race at Cheltenham for David Pipe and a Boxing Day winner for Alan King, two powerful patrons to add to the support of his equally feisty countryman, Evan Williams, and his new partnership with the flourishing Yorkshire yard of Sue and Harvey Smith.

“When I came back, I didn’t know whether anyone would give me a ride. I could have been finished,” says Williams.

For several months his arm was pinned across his chest like Napoleon. When the moment of liberation came, the muscles had wasted so badly his arm refused to move. “I tried to be positive,” he says. “On my ward there was a woman with breast cancer, another person who’d had his scalp taken off. What I had was minor compared to them.” Progress was measured in minor triumphs, such as picking up a cup, holding a pen, shaking hands.

A strong support network, from his parents and his girlfriend, Charlotte, a physiotherapist in Bristol, and an understanding of sport’s pain inherited from his uncles, Gareth and Owen, who both played rugby for Bridgend and Wales, played their part. Above all, there was Isabella, Williams’s five-year-old goddaughter, who was happy to have her favourite jockey’s sole attention for a change.

Seven months and more than 180 rides into his second coming, Williams is still delighted by the hard slog of a workaday afternoon at Kempton Park. Before his injury, two seconds and a third would have prompted a silent trek back to Wales. But five rides for five different trainers was another step forward, a tribute to the endeavour of Dave Roberts, his agent, and to the enduring extent of his own talent in a world that rarely wastes time on the past.

He returned to race-riding at Wincanton in late April, 10 months after his fall, on a horse called Low Delta for his old boss Paul Nicholls. The champion trainer was not just saying welcome back to the young Welshman, but he was telling the sport Williams was worthy of their support.

The first ride was quickly followed by the first winner. Victory in the Gold Cup could not have felt sweeter than Westfield Dancer plugging on to win a selling hurdle at Plumpton on the second day of Williams’s comeback. “It took 150 rides for me to feel that it’s all coming together again. One race my right arm didn’t feel comfortable, the next it would be fine. It wasn’t that the shoulder was hurting, it was all in the mind. You’re training your brain again and it took time.”

At Cheltenham earlier this month, Williams was surprised to be asked to ride Over the Creek for Pipe in a £100,000 handicap chase. “Why am I riding him then?” he asked when told Over the Creek was fancied to win. He was fourth choice, but needed no further invitation to advertise his renaissance, driving home the potential Grand National prospect to victory.

Souffleur rises to top at Newbury

SOUFFLEUR turned in a classy performance to land the Ballymore Properties Challow Novices’ Hurdle at Newbury.

Peter Bowen’s four-year-old had already caught the eye at Aintree and won this Grade One contest at odds of 7-1.

Elusive Dream, trained by Paul Nicholls, was second but could not match the finishing power of Tom O’Brien’s mount. Souffleur completed a hat-trick earlier in the season but found three miles too far in a Grade Two at Cheltenham on his last start. Bowen’s decision to drop him back to two miles was clearly a factor in this six-length success.

Elusive Dream worked hard under Ruby Walsh but looked beaten a long way from the finish, as did third-placed Gauvain, 13 lengths adrift.

O’Brien said: “He helped me when I needed him so I’m delighted.”