After Paris Olympian Liz Halliday suffered a traumatic brain injury in a fall on cross country at the USEA American Eventing Championships in August, the eventing community was quick to rally around her in support.
Each rider leaving a cross country start box understands the inherent risk they are shouldering in doing so. Knowing this, though, never softens the devastation when one of our own goes down. An accident like Liz’s brings sharply into focus the value of life, and the rapidity with which it can be so dramatically changed.
Liz was transferred from Lexington to the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, a research rehabilitation hospital in Chicago, IL, at the end of September. She is fighting her way back, as the world continues to ebb and flow around her, all the while holding open a space for her to step back into when she’s ready.
In demonstration of the strength and community found within the eventing world, Liz’s supporters quickly jumped into action after her accident and subsequent brain surgery. A long road lies ahead. Traumatic brain injuries require an immense amount of recovery, and no two cases are identical.
Luckily, Liz was surrounded by family and friends.
Liz with her crew of supporters in Paris.
Liz’s mother, Debby, was quickly by her side, and hasn’t left since. She was joined by a core team of Liz’s dedicated close friends and longtime owners including Chris, Dilan, and Rob Desino, Mark Williams, and Jenni Autry, who were with her in Kentucky and have relocated to Chicago to support her. Before she left Lexington, Liz’s barn crew visited every day and they have traveled to Chicago to see her since. Members of her extended family have been flying in for visits and countless other friends and family members have stopped by to see Liz as she recovers.
“I have been truly blessed with the support of her amazing group of friends,” Debby noted. ”They have literally carried me through the past difficult months and helped immensely with the many problems that needed to be solved. They give Liz constant positive energy with their love and enthusiasm.”
“Liz is doing so well,” Debby continued. “She is alert, aware and very interactive. Her frequent smiles brighten our days and she is working hard on her rehab, as we knew she would.”
“We are taking this journey one day at a time and cherishing every nugget of progress,” Debby added. “Liz’s determination and resilience is quite inspiring. The outpouring of loving messages from the eventing community has been overwhelming and immensely heart-warming. I am deeply touched by how many people care and are sending their wishes and prayers for Liz’s recovery.”
Liz Halliday and Miks Master C. Photo by Shannon Brinkman Photography.
So while Liz fights a courageous battle to retrieve the life she so suddenly lost, it’s apparent she’s hardly doing so alone.
Without a timeline on when Liz will return to riding, especially at the level she had been, the time eventually arrived to make some decisions about how Liz’s horses and program would carry on.
In the immediate aftermath of a major incident like Liz’s, the task of keeping her program running, which was home to over 20 horses at any given point in time, fell to the crew of grooms and working students she employed at her Lexington base.
“It’s been pretty tough, I can’t lie about that,” Liz’s head groom, Jordan Crabo, shared. “It’s been so weird to have been going strong and looking at this crazy fall season, to suddenly there being nothing. So it’s been quite weird and hard, but the support we’ve had around us has really been amazing.”
Together with her coworkers, Laila Chance and Cam Stacy, Jordan entered into a new, temporary yet longterm, normal. What has been the oddest void, Jordan said, is the inability to ask Liz questions, to bounce ideas off of her. “She really had us work on figuring things out on our own, so it’s not like we were fully crutched on her, but I found I really missed being able to just ask her a question,” she said. “I’ll be riding, and I’ll just think, ‘I just want to ask Liz what she thinks’. Even when she was gone all the time, there was a constant communication.”
Liz Halliday-Sharp and Shanroe Cooley. Photo by Irish Eventing Times.
The girls had immense support from Renee Lane, who is also involved with Liz as an owner and has been instrumental in getting the crew and horses settled into Liz’s Ocala farm for the winter. The horses were primarily put on vacation, taking the daily training grind off the plate of the staff while they sorted out a longer term plan.
Over time, a plan emerged.
The Desinos and other owners of Liz’s horses, along with Debby, identified riders that Liz held in high regard, who might be suited to taking the reins on her competition horses while she was recovering. Lynn Symansky was tapped to come in and help Liz’s team with their training, and will also take the ride on a few of the horses while overseeing the Ocala farm.
Liz’s top horses, both Cooley Nutcracker (Liz’s Paris horse) and Miks Master C have been sent to Boyd Martin. Shanroe Cooley and Cooley Galavant were sent to Will Coleman. Other young horses will also be put into Boyd’s and Will’s programs, while Cooley Quicksilver will stay on at the Ocala farm with Lynn Symansky as he is prepared for sale, something Liz had planned to do prior to her accident. Cooley Optimist, a coming 8-year-old, who Liz regarded as one of her top up and coming horses, will be given to Lynn Symanksy to ride.
In total, it’s been a large team effort to make arrangements for Liz’s horses, and to do so in a way that bore in mind that this was to be a temporary set of solutions that honored what Liz would have chosen for them.
Liz Halliday and Miks Master C. Photo by Shannon Brinkman Photography.
Chris recalled the pressure of making what felt like impossible decisions on behalf of someone who could not make them for herself, expressing gratitude to Erik Duvander and Peter Wylde for stepping in to provide guidance.
One priority of Liz’s team was to ensure that her working students and grooms would have ongoing tutelage and support in her absence. This is where Lynn Symansky comes in. Lynn has known this group of people for many years, even renting a room from the Desinos in the infancy of Ocala Horse Properties during her first season in Ocala. When the call came in asking for help, it was an easy answer for her.
“Certainly there are a lot of emotions involved,” Lynn said. “I came down [to Ocala] a few weeks ago to meet with Renee Lane and iron out last minute details, and it was bizarre driving up to her farm when I had always been used to coming here to cross country school or what have you. It’s an emotional thing for all of us, and my responsibility is to be able to take this very seriously and do right by Liz. I want to honor the program Liz had created and be able to give her girls something to take forward, and I just think this is what anyone would do to help.”
It’s early days for the horses who have moved to Boyd and Will. The plan for the horses is to allow the riders to get to know them over the winter, and then to bring them into competition in the spring season.
“It’s very much a green light to do what they think is best for the horses,” Chris said. “ Everything has just been done under the understanding that when the day comes that Liz would be able to take them back, they would be given back. And I think the riders just want to help, it’s not so much of a personal gain for them.”
Liz Halliday and Cooley Nutcracker. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Boyd echoed this sentiment. He and Liz kept up a friendly competitive spar, always trying to beat each other to the ring in the earliest hours of the morning for their respective pre-rides. “It would usually be us two up there, ribbing each other about being the first one up,” he recalled. “It was strange not to have her there this fall. And so when the Desinos called, it was an automatic yes to whatever it was they needed. To be honest, I don’t look at it as if I’ve suddenly gained these nice horses for myself to ride.”
“I couldn’t imagine what she and her family are going through and all of her friends and her team,” he continued. “You know, basically reaching the pinnacle of the sport [at the Olympics] and have put in two decades of hard work – and then having a huge setback like this…I was eager to help in any way I could.”
Will Coleman shared similar sentiments, expressing no set plans for the horses in his program other than to take the time to get them acclimated to the new arrangements.
“It’s a difficult situation for everyone because no one wants to be here,” he said. “It’s just such a tough thing, what they’re going through and first and foremost, she’s on everybody’s mind and we want her to make the fullest recovery possible. I understand from the owners’ standpoint, they have these horses in the prime of their career. So I’m grateful for the opportunity and I’m looking forward to getting to know them…I don’t have any plans at this point other than to bring them into my program and get a sense of where they are for me.”
“The first thing I told Chris and Rob was to be 100 percent clear that I’m looking at this as me taking these horses until the point Liz can take the reins back,” Will continued. “And when that day hopefully comes, no questions asked, those horses go back to her. I think that’s the case for everybody who’s been on the receiving end of one of these special horses.”
Liz with her longtime friends and owners, Chris and Rob Desino.
“The idea has always been that we will have our Liz back,” Chris Desino said. “We’re very realistic that that could take some time, and in the meantime Liz has these incredible horses who we need to keep going so that they’re ready for her to take back the minute she is able.”
It’s true, what Will said – no one wants to be here. We’d prefer that Liz was here with us, that she, too, was heading into a normal offseason with her fellow competitors after another busy, grueling year.
But one thing remains crystal clear: Liz is a fighter. She’s bold, she’s brave, she takes no shit. We don’t know exactly what the future holds for her, but we do know she has the best medical care to be found, surrounded by the people who love her the most, and cushioned by the collective strength of the eventing community at large, whose cards, gifts, and well-wishes adorn the room that she currently calls home, and who will welcome her back with open arms when she is ready.
Additional updates on Liz can be found on her website, where her team provides periodic updates on her rehab and recovery. You can continue to send your well-wishes to Liz by using #KeepFightingLiz or #LapForLiz on social media.
