In the fall of 1994 I was filming Village of the Damned in Northern California, but I was desperate to compete in one more combined training event before the season was over. So I caught a plane back east and went up to Mark Weissbecker’s barn in the Berkshires, where he had been training my Irish Thoroughbred, Denver, while I was away. On Saturday I took Denver to the meet at Stonleigh-Burnham. This was a competition in which all three phases are done on the same day: dressage and stadium jumping in the morning, cross-country in the afternoon. I hadn’t been on Denver for more than three months, but Mark had kept him going well, and we were high in the standings before the afternoon. As we started the cross-country phase, however, I realized that Denver was reverting to one of his old bad habits: he was running with his head down as we approached the jumps instead of with his head up, which is the safe and proper way to approach an obstacle. I was not happy with the way he took the first four jumps. We got over them, but I felt that the two of us weren’t connecting. I pulled him up and retired from the course rather than risk injury in the quest for a prize.
I was a good sailor, having raced or cruised in all kinds of sailboats from the age of seven. I had flown various airplanes for over twenty years and made two solo trips across the Atlantic; I had raced sailplanes, and once climbed to 32,000 feet in the powerful rising air currents over Pikes Peak in Colorado. I enjoyed scuba diving, played tennis, and was a skier as well. I never felt that I was courting danger, because I always stayed within my self-imposed limits. In all aspects of my life I enjoyed being in control, which is why my accident was a devastating shock not only to me but to everyone who knew me.
The fact that I went to Culpeper at all was a fluke. I had originally signed up to compete that weekend at an event in Vermont. I’d had success in Vermont the year before. I’d finished first in one event at Tamarack, and placed third in the Area I Championships in the fall of 1994. I’d met a lot of nice people. I also preferred the cool weather. I figured that on Memorial Day weekend, it would be more pleasant in Vermont than down in Virginia.
I also knew that this event would be the last one I could do for the season, because I was about to go to Ireland for a film. I was scheduled to leave five days later to act in Kidnapped, produced by Francis Ford Coppola and directed by Ivan Passer. I had been over to Ireland the week before to rent a house, and I’d found a perfect one about twenty miles south of Dublin, which just happened to be right next to a stable. I’d made arrangements to train with one of the top event riders in Ireland, who was based there. I was very excited about that. I was going to be riding in the movie, too.
Taking a ramp with Denver at the Wilton, Connecticut, horse trials, showing good teamwork.
All going well on a borrowed horse during a clinic with Mike Huber in New Mexico.
Preparing to enter the dressage ring with Buck, 9:01 A.M., May 27, 1995, just six hours before the accident.
I started piano lessons when I was eight. I continued playing into adulthood and especially enjoyed improvisation.
Sports were always an essential part of my life.
So my plan was to do one more event on my new horse, Eastern Express, nicknamed Buck, whom I’d bought in California during the shoot of Village of the Damned. He was a twelve-year-old American Thoroughbred with a lot of experience in combined training—in fact, he and his previous owner had been coached by Brian Sabo. Brian recommended the horse to me, describing him as a fearless jumper in both cross-country and stadium, big enough to carry me, though not a star in dressage. He was a light chestnut gelding with a sweet disposition, easily won over with plenty of carrots and TLC. I tried him out in all three phases at Yves Sauvignon’s place, not far from the film location, and we agreed it was a good match. I felt that Denver’s tendency to run on the cross-country course and occasionally knock down rails in the show-jumping phase meant I would probably not be able to move him up to the higher levels of competition. But Buck had the experience, a keen attitude, and a lot of mileage left in him.
I brought him back east after I finished the film and worked with Lendon Gray, one of the top dressage coaches in the country, whose barn is near our home in Bedford. (Dana and I left the city in 1992, ostensibly because we didn’t want to bring up our new son, Will, in the Flatiron district of New York; but I was especially happy with our decision because it gave me a chance to ride six days a week.) I trained with Lendon during the winter of 1994–95 and did well. Buck’s dressage was coming along nicely. I alternated work in the ring with conditioning, walking him up and down hills to strengthen his hind end; he needed a stronger canter. By January I was taking blue ribbons at local dressage shows and getting higher scores than I ever had before. I was very happy with the way the horse was going and the kind of partnership Buck and I were building.
My plan was to spend the ’95 season with Buck doing Training Level events and then move up to Preliminary in ’96. In Training Level the jumps are never more than three feet six and the combinations are not too difficult, but the Preliminary Level is much more demanding, and you really need a brave and capable horse as well as full-time dedication to the sport. I wanted to be careful, to do everything steadily and safely, but to make progress. Novice Level was no challenge anymore, and Training Level was getting to be pretty easy. But I wanted to make sure I was prepared for Preliminary.
At an event in Massachusetts just a couple of weeks before the accident, Buck was stunning going cross-country. He just ate the course up; he had a ball, and so did I. This was very encouraging to me, because we’d missed some practice and a couple of events in April; once he had a sore back, another time he had an abscess in his foot, which kept me off him for more than ten days just at the time I would ordinarily have been shifting into high gear in preparation for the season. Perhaps I should have seen these as warning signs. But Buck was so talented and seemed to enjoy going cross-country so much and our partnership seemed so solid that I thought we were well enough prepared. Our performance at that event the weekend of May 14 seemed to confirm that all was going well.
In April I had moved to another barn in the Bedford area called Peace and Carrots (a very nice facility even though I couldn’t stand the name) and was reunited with my first coach, Bill McGuinness. Most of the barns in the area concentrate on dressage or hunters or jumpers, but Bill ran the only combined training barn and had a group of half a dozen loyal clients, all of whom were as motivated as I was. They had decided to go to Culpeper for the Memorial Day weekend, and Bill invited me to come along to help keep expenses down. I knew from experience it’s more fun to compete as a group, so I agreed to go and got an entry in at the last minute. I’ve since learned that this sort of impulsive decision is typical of many accidents. At the last minute someone decides to get in another car or take an earlier flight. I would have preferred to go to Vermont; our summer house is nearby in Williamstown, and we could have stayed there. I’ve often thought that if I’d stuck to the original plan nothing bad would have happened. But Dana pointed out that if we’d gone sailing that weekend instead, I could just as easily have been hit in the head by the boom, knocked overboard, and drowned. An accident can happen at any time, even to someone who is cautious and in control.
In the spring of 1995 I remember that Dana and I were very busy doing our own things. Dana, a wonderful singer and actress, had several auditions that she needed to prepare for. I was riding a lot, getting ready for the season, and also involved in helping to rewrite the script for Kidnapped. And there were other things—my work for The Creative Coalition (TCC), a public service organization for which I served as copresident, social obligations, personal appearances, and speeches. This weekend was intended to be a family minivacation before going back to work.
The plan was that I would drive down, Buck would go in the big trailer with the other horses, and Dana would take our son, Will, to Washington by train, then rent a car, because we thought he would enjoy the adventure. We stayed at the Holiday Inn not far from the fairg
rounds, which had a pool and a sloping grassy area where the three of us could kick around a soccer ball. I arrived ahead of them on Friday in time to practice that afternoon. Dressage and cross-country were going to be on Saturday, and show jumping on Sunday. Buck and I rehearsed the dressage test on Friday afternoon, and it went well. That night we all had an early dinner at the Holiday Inn.
Staying in a motel was a big deal for Will, who was nearly three. He had his own bed and his own room, and he felt very grown-up about it. When he unpacked, he put everything—clothes, shoes, toys—into one dresser drawer. We piled pillows around his bed and kept the door to his room open for safety. Of course, this meant very little privacy for us. Often we were apart on Memorial Day weekends because of our schedules. I think Dana was less than thrilled to spend this holiday watching me compete. She said to me, half-jokingly, “Next Memorial Day, I get to choose what we do.” She was thinking: We really need to spend some time alone together. We’ll just get through this weekend and we’ll be able to reconnect again.
I got up early on that Saturday morning. My dressage time was 9:08. We did very nicely, though Buck was a little tense. I felt he knew that the cross-country was coming up next, and that’s what he loves best, what he was born to do. He could see the other horses warming up to go cross-country. So there was a slightly distracted quality about his dressage, as if he’d been thinking: I’ve got to go through this and then we get to do the fun stuff.
In spite of that we had a pretty good ride, and at the end of the dressage I was in fourth place out of twenty-seven. That gave me a good chance to move up. Somebody would probably drop a rail in show jumping; each rail means a subtraction of four points. So if you’re in the top six after dressage, you’re in a good position to win the event. I was happy. I cooled Buck down, put him in his stall, and went back to the Holiday Inn to spend time with Dana and Will, to chill out. At around one I changed into my cross-country equipment and headed back to the fairgrounds.
I went out and walked the course again. I had already done it twice the day before. But I walked it one more time. The first six jumps seemed very easy. Then they became more difficult until the two jumps that worried me, sixteen and seventeen. Sixteen was a water complex, where you had to jump in, change direction, and jump out of the water over a log. Then there would be a long gallop across a field to seventeen, a wide bench between two trees. By the time you got to it you’d be clipping along at a really good pace. Those were the two jumps I was concentrating on.
You walk a cross-country course to decide how you’re going to take every jump. You literally write your plan down on a map of the course. You decide: Okay, when I pass that tree I’m going to slow him down. When I pass that second tree there, I’m going to sit up. When I get over that jump, I’m going to look left because I’ve got a sharp turn to make. You decide where you’re going to gallop, where you’re going to slow down and show-jump it. You decide how you’re going to do every jump, and you write the plan down and study it overnight. The cross-country course opens at 3:00 on Friday, and the ride is on Saturday or Sunday, so you always have time to think things through. Still, I walked the course again to be on the safe side.
When I was plotting my strategy earlier in the day, I certainly wasn’t worried about the third fence on the course, which was a zigzag. It was only about three feet three, in the shape of a large W. I was mainly concerned about sixteen, the water jump, because I hadn’t taken Buck through much water. And in order to take the big bench at seventeen, we’d really have to have a good rhythm going. But Buck had been so brilliant two weeks earlier that I was feeling quite confident. Plus, I’d recently had a private clinic with Stephen Bradley, one of the top event riders in the country, and that, too, had gone well. He was impressed by my horse and very complimentary about our partnership. Buck and I were really settling into a groove.
When I arrived back at the stables, I ran into John Williams, an Advanced Level rider and trainer and a good friend. He had taken care of Denver when the horse was recovering from a tendon injury in 1993. He had just come over to say hello since he lived nearby. I told him that I liked the course and was glad I’d come to Virginia, that I had a great new horse and was looking forward to a good ride. He wished me luck.
From that moment until I regained consciousness several days later in the intensive care unit at the University of Virginia, I have no memory of what occurred.
Later, as I tried to reconstruct the sequence of events, I was told that I finished suiting up, put on my chest protector and helmet, got Buck out of the stall, and headed out for the warm-up area. There were three practice jumps: first a crossrail, then a vertical, then an oxer—two rails with a separation between them. You have to take them all in the same direction, and you always warm up at a hand gallop; you don’t trot because you want to let the horse know that now it’s time to be aggressive. For vertical jumps you slow down and sit up, but because you’re competing against the clock you have to move right along to make the time. Many of the jumps are wide but not very high; they’re called fly fences. Those are the ones you take right in stride at a full gallop, staying well off the horse’s back so that he can move freely underneath you. I was particularly careful of Buck’s back, which was still somewhat tender, probably because I had been working him a little too hard to make up for lost practice time. This high position is easier on the horse but more precarious for the rider, especially a tall one, in case of a sudden stop.
The warm-up went fine. I left the starting box at exactly 3:01. The times are always that precise; another rider goes every two minutes. We made a nice strong start. Witnesses said that Buck was absolutely willing and ready. First jump, no problem. The second jump was a medium-size log pile. No problem. Then we came to the zigzag. The fence judge’s report says I was going fast, not excessively fast but moving right along.
Apparently Buck started to jump the fence, but all of a sudden he just put on the brakes. No warning, no hesitation, no sense of anything wrong. The judge reported that there was nothing to suggest Buck was worried about the fence. He just stopped. It was what riders call a dirty stop; it occurs without warning. Someone said that a rabbit ran out and spooked Buck. Someone said it could have been shadows.
When I went over I took the bridle, the bit, the reins, everything off Buck’s face. I landed right on my head because my hands were entangled in the bridle and I couldn’t get an arm free to break my fall.
I flipped over landing on the other side of the fence. My helmet prevented any brain damage, but the impact of the landing broke my first and second vertebrae. This is called a hangman’s injury because it’s the kind of break that happens when the trapdoor opens and the noose snaps tight. It was as if I’d been hanged, cut down, and then sent to a hospital. I was heard to say, “I can’t breathe,” and that was it.
Buck probably ducked his head right after he stopped. This often happens; the horse puts his head down because the rider is coming forward and he wants to get away from the weight. As you go over a jump you’re supposed to stay in the center of the horse—in fact you should always be in the center of your horse—but if you’re both committed to the jump and he suddenly refuses, it’s very hard to stop your forward momentum, especially if you’re well off his back the way you’re supposed to be when you go cross-country. And in order to protect Buck’s back, I was actually riding with my stirrups a little higher than usual.
My hands probably got caught in the bridle because I was making every effort to stay on. If you fall off during your cross-country ride, you lose sixty points and have no chance of placing in the competition. If my hands had been free, my guess is that I would have broken a wrist. Or I would have just rolled over, gotten up, cursed quietly to myself, and hopped back on. Instead I came straight down on the top rail of the jump, hyperextended my neck, and slumped down in a heap. Head first, six feet, four inches and 215 pounds of me straight down on the rail. Within seconds I was paralyzed and not breathing.
/> In many other sports it’s essential to be light on your feet. In tennis you can’t be flat-footed and move effectively around the court. In skiing your weight is forward, reaching down the fall line. I remember when I was first learning to ski someone told me to try to curl my toes upward inside my boots because that forces your knees and weight forward. If you try to pull away from the mountain, if you raise your shoulders or take your weight off your downhill ski, you’re going to slide and fall. The important thing is to stay forward.
Yet in riding, if you get too far forward before the horse leaves the ground you’re likely to get into trouble. And that may have been what happened to me over that fence. As you go over a jump, your heels have to be thrust down and your butt should be reaching backwards to keep you in the center of the horse. This position is the opposite of what comes naturally. You have to train yourself to keep your heels down and stay in the middle. “On your toes” in riding invites disaster.
For more than a year I wondered if my injury was purely an accident, a freakish event, or if I was responsible for what happened to me. Buck had never stopped on a cross-country course before, so what caused him to refuse this easy fence that he could probably have walked over? Rabbit or no rabbit, shadows or no shadows, I think I may have done something to cause the accident, and I have to take responsibility for it.
I often think of my friend Tim Murray, who went sailing one day in November 1994 and drowned. Why? He took the Styrofoam flotation out of his boat because he was working on it. He went out on a windy day with no life preserver, and he and his friend—both expert sailors—raised the spinnaker. Normally this wouldn’t present a problem, but two miles offshore waves were building up, it was blowing twenty-five knots, and the boat swamped. The water was forty-eight degrees, and there was no way they could make it to shore. They both drowned, for all those reasons.
Still Me Page 2
