When Sidney Underwood is honored at Parx racing, formerly Philadelphia Park for the June 3, Jockeys and Jeans, she and the other fallen jockey honorees will have their photos taken in the track’s Winners’ Circle following a race named in their honor. For Sydney it will be a particularly special moment. She will become the first honoree to be in the same Winners Circle she graced both as a jockey and trainer. 
She became a paraplegic when her mount, Handsome Aswer ducked from a shadow at Atlantic City during night racing on June 19, 1992 and fell. At the time she had been riding for some eight years and won 199 races from 2,107 mounts and with her mounts earning $1.5 million,
She spent five months in a body cast, went through a year of rehab and eventually became strong enough to become a trainer. Racing on tracks chiefly in Pennsylvania and New Jersey she started 387 horses, winning 40 races and over $600,000. But she was incapable of much of the hands-on horse care trainers of small stables often provide, and she decided to move back home to Alabama. “What it takes somebody else five minutes to do with a horse, it takes me an hour and a half,” she said.
She lives in an ancient farmhouse and still helps as much as possible with the hands on boarding and training of 17 horses of various breeds.  She was teaching other handicapped persons how to ride until her pony died of old age.  She plans to find another.  
In 2009, she said she was bankrupt and about to lose the farm. She had been bedridden for months and then hospitalized for months suffering from pressure sores, a serious malady common among paraplegics and one that requires massive doses of antibiotics and extensive wound care.  When released, she tried to raise the funds to make her bathroom wheelchair assessable. Friends put an ad on Facebook.  Nancy LaSala, the Director of PDJF saw it, called and she began receiving payments from the organization.    
The following year she and her mother were between planes at Atlanta Hartsfield Airport when they struck up a conversation with Express Jet pilot Jeff King and shared their mutual love of horses. Two years later they were married.
“Married or not, the funds from PDJF literally saved my life,” she said. “I no longer have to worry about foreclosure and my property taxes. The funds make a huge difference. Medicaid doesn’t pay everything and I don’t think most people understand how expensive it is to be in a wheelchair.
She said at one point in rehab, “I was either going to blow my brains out or wind up in the Looney Bin,” she said. “I was never going to be someone who never stops moving to someone who never moves. I never had a backup plan.”
Thanks to family, friends, and faith, things have changed for the better.  She said attending her Episcopal Church weekly is important to her.  “You have to have something driving you forward or you’ll go crazy. Right now it’s hard on my pity days to be pitiful.”