Polo player Ignacio “ Nacho” Figueras had the scare of his life last month when he fell in a match and temporarily lost the feeling in his legs. He tells Lara Logan he was afraid he would never walk again. The international sports star and Ralph Lauren model speaks to Logan for a story on the next edition of 60 MINUTES SPORTS Wednesday, July 3rd at 9PM only on SHOWTIME.
In a charity match in England, Figueras went down on the field and his horse fell on him and stepped on him as it arose. His hip was broken. “I knew exactly that second that I was broken. I knew that – I know that something was not right”, he says. “I felt like a needle in the center of my body going like, ching!”
In the ambulance, Figueras feels one of the greatest fears anyone can ever experience when the paramedic asks the driver to speed up. “I couldn’t feel my legs. So I started to fear that I was not going to walk anymore,” he tells Logan. By the time he got to the hospital, he was very relieved to feel his toes and says the driver told him they sped up in case there was internal bleeding. That was another relief to an athlete who was worried he would no longer compete or walk. “You made me scared for a little bit,” Figueras says he told the paramedic. Watch the excerpt.
The broken hip may be his worst injury, but it joins a long list of the damage he has sustained playing polo. Figueras says he has also broken his wrist, ankle and nose (twice) and had numerous stitches in addition to being knocked unconscious twice.
Nonetheless, he’s raring to go as soon as he heals. “I can’t wait to get back on the horse. I can’t wait to go flat out again.I’m not going to stop until God tells me not to play polo anymore.”
Figueras expects to be back on a horse in the fall.