Kelly Ryan

One day in the not-too-distant past, a jockey who had taken a tumble at a Mid-Atlantic racetrack was required to get a doctor's note giving him the medical all-clear before he could ride at the same facility. And so, that's what he did. But rather than head immediately to a physician in that same state, the jockey hopped the border to ride at Laurel Park. After taking his mounts at the Maryland track, the rider swung by the office of Kelly Ryan, co-medical director for the Maryland Horsemen's Health Program....

When Kelly Ryan, primary care sports medicine physician for Medstar Health and co-medical director for the Maryland Horsemen's Health Program, discusses with her peers in the sports medicine world her work attending to injured jockeys, she's often met with the sort of wide-eyed puzzlement usually reserved for rare finds. "Every single bad case that we have is almost one in a million--like no other sports medicine doctor has ever seen this type of injury before," Ryan said. "They're all very unique and every single one of them could be a...