108 SIDELINES APRIL 2014
FOR HORSE PEOPLE • ABOUT HORSE PEOPLE
From Skiing ragedy to
By Lindsay Y. McCall
I
n April 2006, dressage rider Lara Oles went to Breckenridge Colorado for
a skiing vacation with her friends. She had been a skier for 28 years and
had minimal falls within that time, but this day was different. The conditions
were icy and Lara had fat powder skis, which proved to be a bad combination.
Within a moment, Lara fell and as she tried to stop she kept sliding down
the hill until her shoulder hit a fence post that was emerging from the melting
snowpack. Only 10 inches of the post was exposed, flipping her over when she
hit instead of stopping her dead. “I had been a ski patrol at our local mountain
for a few years and because of my training I knew instantly that I had sustained
a spinal cord injury,” recalled Lara.
Her bodily injuries included a punctured lung, a bleed on the back of her brain,
three broken vertebrae, five broken ribs, a broken clavicle and scapula. “If that
was all,” remembered Lara, “I would have healed and not had permanent inju-
ries. However, I also had three brachial plexus avulsions leaving my right arm
permanently paralyzed with excruciating lifelong phantom pains. Then three
days after the accident I had a blood clot on my spinal cord causing stroke-like
symptoms in my right leg. I had to re-learn to walk, and still suffer from perma-
nent spasticity and weakness in that leg which affects everything I do.”
The road to recovery after Lara’s horrific accident would be long, excruciating,
and it would test her both mentally and physically. Her first thought while lying in
the hospital was to sell her horses. However, her husband Dan knew the horses
were an incentive to Lara, they were her passion and they would be the key to
her recovering both physically and emotionally.
Born in Detroit, Lara had a love for horses from the time she was a toddler.
She remembers riding on a bouncy horse until she was too big to fit. At four
years of age her mother enrolled her in riding lessons and the rest was history.
e
Para-Equestrian
Lara and Slate at the 2013 U.S Para-
Equestrian Dressage Symposium.
Photo by Lindsay Y. McCall
Lara and Slate enjoying a mountain ride.
Photo Courtesy of Lara Oles
Dressage riumph
T
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