Featured
Howard, who has a neurological disease called dystonia, has become one of the world’s top para equestrians since taking up dressage in 2021. Her journey back into the saddle began at Northeastern.
Fiona Howard spent over 800 days at the hospital while attending Northeastern University, a degenerative condition slowly sapping her ability to walk. During those stays, all she wanted was to get back on a horse.
She did. And next month, she’ll be on horseback in Paris.
Howard, a 2021 psychology graduate, has been named to the U.S. Paralympic dressage team for the 2024 Paris Games, opening Aug. 28. One of four horse-rider pairs representing the United States, she’ll be competing atop Diamond Dunes, the 12-year-old Hanoverian gelding she’s been riding since early spring.
“It still doesn’t feel real,” Howard says from her home in Wellington, Florida. “I’m definitely excited, but it hasn’t quite sunk in for me.”
The venue, too, is out of a dream: Howard and Dunes will compete on the palace grounds in Versailles, the site for all of this year’s Olympic and Paralympic equestrian events.
Dressage, often known as “horse ballet,” is an equestrian discipline in which horse and rider pairs complete “tests” — set routines of movements that increase in difficulty from “beginner” to Olympic-level “Grand Prix.”
Since taking up the sport three years ago, Howard has quickly become one of the top-ranked para dressage riders in the world. An accomplished equestrian growing up in the U.K., she stopped riding after a series of catastrophic health problems put her in the hospital through most of her teens and early 20s.
At 19, she was diagnosed with dystonia, a condition that causes involuntary muscle spasms — and has left her with almost no control of her limbs and extremities. After spending every moment she could on horseback as a child, she didn’t ride for nearly four years after moving to the U.S. for treatment.
With the help of her medical team at Boston Children’s Hospital (she credits a surgeon there, Dr. Terry Buchmiller, with saving her life), Howard first returned to horses, slowly, as a non-riding member of Northeastern’s Equestrian Team. She started out simply sitting on her friends’ mounts, then gradually learned how to ride all over again within her body’s new limitations, competing in beginner-level intercollegiate shows.
When she started in para dressage, Howard’s prior equestrian background and innate feel for horses made her a force to be reckoned with almost immediately. The “para” in para dressage stands for “parallel,” and riders compete with adjusted tests and accommodations based on their physical disabilities. Para riders fall into one of five grades, from the most physically impaired (1) to the least (5).
Howard competes at a Grade 2; aids include her legs being strapped into the saddle via her stirrups and girth (“If I didn’t have that, my legs would be stuck backwards doing their own thing,” she told NGN Magazine in May), as well as lightweight dressage whips to signal her horse. In 2022, she moved from Boston to Wellington to train with Kate Shoemaker, a 2020 Paralympic bronze medalist and fellow member of the 2024 team (competing at a Grade 4).
Since teaming with Shoemaker, Howard has competed in elite para dressage shows all over the world, from Europe to Qatar. After a blockbuster 2024 show season, she is the top Grade 2 rider in the world going into the Paralympics.
Howard and Diamond Dunes will travel to Paris in mid-August for pre-competition training camp; the para dressage events begin Sept. 3. Currently, the U.S. has the world’s top-ranked team, but Howard and her teammates will face stiff competition from nations with strong dressage traditions — including The Netherlands, Germany and Great Britain, the reigning 2020 champions.
Along with many other past champions, Howard is joined in Grade 2 competition by Pepo Puch, a five-time Paralympic dressage medalist for Austria. Like Howard, Puch was a decorated able-bodied equestrian, competing at the 2004 Olympics before a riding accident left him partially paralyzed. Though her competitor, he’s been a “wonderful” source of support, Howard says. She’s excited to share her first Paralympics with him and her fellow Paralympians from around the world, all of whom have, in different ways, faced painful challenges en route to Paris.
“I just want to enjoy the experience and ride the best I can on that day,” Howard says. “Wherever that lands me.”