After paralysis, equestrian athlete sets sights on Paralympics

After paralysis, equestrian athlete sets sights on Paralympics

(Becca Tolman, Impulsion Images)


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SALT LAKE CITY — Cambry Kaylor, paralyzed eight years ago in an accident, has reached the point where she is grateful for her disability. She credits it with a chance to compete in the Rio Paralympic Games in 2016.

In 2005, Kaylor was 18. She was training to become an international competitor in equestrian vaulting — dance and gymnastics atop a horse — when, during a dismount, her foot caught in her partner’s uniform, causing her to fall and sever her spinal cord. Upon hearing she was paralyzed from the waist down, her first question to doctors was: “Can I ride again?”

Eight years later, Kaylor has been through rehabilitation and established Technique Equestrian Vaulting Club, where she also coaches. She is working on her graduate degree at the University of Utah occupational therapy. And, most recently, she has begun training to compete in dressage at the 2016 Paralympic Games.

No longer able to compete in vaulting, Kaylor said she has been wary of competitive riding. For her to ride, a horse must learn a different set of commands and ignore Kaylor’s legs slamming against its side — which could be confused with a command for it to move faster.

“It was hard for me to go from, just a couple months earlier, being able to do all these really difficult skills to not even being able to get on the horse by myself. It was too rough of a transition for me,” Kaylor said. “I did take a couple lessons in dressage, but I think the memory of my legs was too fresh, so I was really frustrated. I didn’t really know what I wanted. Then I started coaching and that kind of filled the void that was there. It has for a long time.”

Cambry Kaylor atop haflinger, Opal. (Photo: Becca Tolman, Impulsion 
Images)
Cambry Kaylor atop haflinger, Opal. (Photo: Becca Tolman, Impulsion Images)

Last year, her mother started taking dressage lessons to cross-train their club vaulting horses and keep them in shape. She urged Kaylor to join her, but it wasn’t until her mother's lesson partner was unable to make it that Kaylor yielded. Rushed to make the lesson and still in her pajama pants, Kaylor gave dressage a second chance.

“I was kind of intimidated because her instructor (David Macmillan) has a (United States Dressage Federation) gold medal. He’s accomplished in the dressage world,” Kaylor said. “He was so nice to me. I thought, ‘This is so much fun. I don’t know why I haven’t been doing this.’ It just felt amazing. I wasn’t scared I was going to fall. It was unreal. I was just really excited about it.”

“I feel like I am so connected to the horse. I don’t know if it’s because I don’t feel my legs anymore and I feel (horses) better or because I don’t remember what it’s like to have legs.”

A small haflinger pony named Opal as her legs, she continued the lessons. She became more and more ambitious about her place in the sport. After attending an international competition in Estes Park, Colo., with her mentor Julie Young and Brian Hafner, a USDF gold medalist, she saw her secret ambition to compete was realistic.

“I took a lesson with Brian and he told me ‘You have really incredible posture, I can’t tell that you’re paralyzed when you riding your horse. I think you should go for it.’ That gave me the confidence,” she said.

Back in Utah, Kaylor told her trainer, Macmillan, what she wanted to do.

“I told my trainer, ‘I feel silly saying this because I’m nobody but I really want to compete on an international level and I want to go to the world equestrian games and I want to go to Rio. This is what I want,’ ” Kaylor said.

Kaylor has worked with Young, Hafner and Macmillan to prepare herself for the games. Because Opal is unable to perform some of the tasks required in dressage, at the end of September, Kaylor travelled to Denmark to meet Donnewind, a 15-year-old horse from Denmark that has competed in para-dressage in Europe.

“He was just so easy going, he was so sweet,” Kaylor said. “I feel really comfortable around my vaulting horses because they’re used to kids running at them and jumping at them, they’re totally bomb-proof, but most horses aren’t like that and there’s a ton of training that goes into that. But Donnewind, he was so sweet. I was able to lead him in and out of the arena on my own and take off his saddle and his bridle while he hung his head in my lap.”

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Upon her return home, she found her backup horse Boston, had died in the barn.

“It’s not like soccer where you have a ball or gymnastics you have a balance beam,” Kaylor said. “You are working with a live animal and things happen — and unexpectedly. You put all this effort, work and connection into it and you never know what’s going to happen because they’re so frail.”

She was distraught at both the loss of the animal and the sudden pressure to find a horse with which to compete. But she realized it was just another challenge to overcome on the way to success.

“It’s part of every sport. If I’m going to let something like this break me down I’m not going to succeed, I’m not going to be able to achieve what I want,” Kaylor said. “This happens to every athlete. The athletes who succeed and are champions are the ones who don’t let these obstacles get in the way. They just keep pushing forward and pursuing. That’s what I’ve had to tell myself with Boston. Even though this is such a big heartache and a heartbreak, and it is discouraging, I can’t let that get in my way. I have to keep pushing on and I have to keep training and keep doing everything in my power to do to get there.”

That lesson of not giving up, she said, is what her paralysis has taught her over and over again. She has learned to work harder and push through challenges. Kaylor credits her disability with helping her achieve her dream of competing in international equestrian sports.

“It’s shaped a lot of who I am. I like the person I am. It really has a lot to with the fact that I was paralyzed. Really good things happened from it,” Kaylor said. “I never wanted to be paralyzed, but I could never have gone to the games… This disability has given me the opportunity to do incredible things.”

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Celeste Tholen Rosenlof

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