Courtney King-Dye

Courtney King-Dye is an inspiration and is another example of how the brain and neuroplasticity are truly amazing. Courtney King-Dye was on the 2008 Dressage Olympic team. She placed 13^th in the individual equestrian dressage and helped the US team to place 4^th in the overall dressage competition. Dressage is the fancy dance like horseback riding sport that is very seamless and elegant in appearance but takes patience, dedication, hard work, and a lot of love to accomplish. In 2010 while schooling a horse, Courtney was involved in an equine accident. The horse she was riding tripped and fell. Courtney was still in the saddle and the horse landed on top of her and when she hit the ground, she hit her head very hard. Courtney was not wearing a helmet and suffered a traumatic brain injury. She was airlifted by helicopter to a hospital and was in a coma for a month. Courtney did wake up, but her entire brain had been injured. She had to relearn how to do everything: talk, eat, and walk. The right side of her body is weaker than the left and she still has trouble walking and uses a cane and or sometimes a wheelchair to get around. Her speech has also been affected not returning to what it was before. Courtney is now an advocate for horseback riders to wear helmets through an organization called Riders4Helmets, which has made a big impact on encouraging people to wear helmets while riding. Even a lot of upper level dressage riders show support by now wearing helmets while competing, when once they use to only wear a fancy top hat.

            As part of Courtney’s rehabilitation, she received speech therapy, physical therapy, and occupational therapy. She also used hippotherapy as a big part of her rehabilitation. And eventually was able to shift into using therapeutic riding as the majority for her preferred healing process. The difference between the two is that hippotherapy uses the horse’s body and movement as the therapeutic tool, helping to stimulate movement in the rider's body, thus also stimulating the brain through the nervous system. Therapeutic riding aims at eventually aiding the rider to ride independently through slowly fading cognitive and physical supports to the rider. Courtney then set her sights on competing in the Paralympics. She talked about how her parents were scared for her to ride again, but for Courtney it was really the only way she knew how to feel fully alive.  Courtney did in fact compete again showing in the Para 1a Freestyle.

 Courtney lives in Millbrook, NY with her husband and three beautiful children at Bel Aire Farm where she raises her children and also teaches dressage lessons twice a week. When we started to go over Traumatic Brain Injuries in class Courtney’s story instantly came to mind. She is such an inspiration to so many. I quickly began my search on her story and to my happy surprise she has her own blog. There are also many articles written about her and YouTube videos as well, pre and post injury. She continues to write articles for horse magazines and has even written a book, Courtney’s Quest published in 2014. I have not read it yet, as I just found out about it but when I have time, I definitely plan on reading it and I encourage you to read it as well. I have always felt helmet safety to be an important issue no matter what sport people are participating in and as a rider myself Riders4Helements is a great organization and is something positive that came from a very serious accident. Courtney even says that herself, she feels much joy when people write to her thanking her for advocating for wearing helmets anytime you ride (King-Dye 2013).

King-Dye, C. (2020). Ckd Dressage. https://www.ckddressage.com

King-Dye, C. (2013, February 9). Riders4Helemets courtney king-dye three years on [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/pNfRVNrdyEU