Fighting Back

At 7.30 on a hot June morning in 1977 Georgina Colthurst was schooling one of her horses prior to her first international Three-Day Event, before dashing back home to change into her school uniform on her way to take her 'O' levels. At 7.31 she lay totally paralysed - in a tangle of jumping-poles. After weeks of examination and diagnosis, two of Britain's finest neurologists tried to break it to her parents that Georgina, even if she survived and regained her speech, might remain at least partially paralysed, with the mental ability of a child. There was no certain cure and not much hope of any significant improvement. But they had reckoned without the extraordinary courage and determination of Georgina and her family in the face of this shattering prognosis. With the help of conventional and unconventional medicine, tape-recordings of her home life, the patience of friends and experts, and especially her horses, Georgina first emerged from her seven-week coma and then not only fully recovered her speech and the use of her body, but even more remarkably, is now back in contention for eventing honours.