GEORGE Baker has left hospital and will continue his recovery from the head injury he sustained in February at a rehabilitation centre nearer to his Oxfordshire home.

The Didcot-based rider, who won the St Leger last September on Harbour Law, was riding Boomerang Bob for Jamie Osborne on the frozen lake track at St Moritz in Switzerland when the horse was brought down and fatally injured.

Baker was found to have suffered some bleeding in the brain and had been undergoing treatment in the Wellington Hospital in London.

But the Injured Jockeys Fund have announced the 34-year-old has now been transferred to the Glenside rehabilitation centre at Salisbury.

Baker said: “The staff at The Wellington have been amazing. I arrived there on March 6 and they told my wife, Nicola, that I would be there for at least four months.”Thanks to their support, I have made really good progress, have learnt to walk again and hope to get home in the next month or so.”

Meanwhile, Eve Johnson Houghton sent out the first winner of the year from her Blewbury stables when Reaver sprang a 25-1 surprise at Nottingham.

Charlie Bishop brought the four-year-old home with a withering run in the final furlong of an extended mile handicap to beat Wannabe Friends by half a length.

Mr Pocket, from Paul Cole’s Whatcombe yard, near Wantage, was involved in a thrilling dead heat under Luke Morris with Goodwood Crusader in an extended five-furlong handicap at Bath.

Over the jumps, Stepover returned to winning ways for Alex Hales’s Edgcote stables, near Banbury, in an extended mile and seven-furlong handicap hurdle at Southwell, with Trevor Whelan on board.

Pride Of Parish, trained by Alan Hill at Aston Rowant and ridden by his son, Joe, won when the ten-lengths leader, Are They Your Own, fell at the last in a novices’ hunters’ chase at Fakenham.

Edgcote handler Ben Case also struck at the Norfolk track when Phare Isle held on to beat Amron Kali by a neck in a handicap hurdle under Max Kendrick.

And Breath Of Blighty got off the mark at the 12th attempt for Paul Webber’s Mollington yard, near Banbury, when taking a novices’ limited handicap chase at Kempton in the hands of Tom O’Brien.