Paralympian dressage rider Lisa Martin will compete at Versailles, Paris, on September 4th and 5th 2024. 

This is Lisa’s second time competing. Her first campaign took her to Rio de Janeiro where she competed in extreme heat and placed fourth.  

The difference between the two Games is that in the interim, Lisa sustained a nearly fatal injury that crushed her pelvis, pubic bone, sacrum and part of her spine.  

Lisa says, “Around the time of the big bushfires up near Taree three-and-a-half years ago, I helped to organise feed, horse veils and veterinary needs for some of the families up there who were doing it tough. There was a well-known dressage family who lost everything. I told them they could bring their horses and come and live in the cottage on my farm.  

“I feel like there’s someone upstairs looking after me. I would’ve been alone at the farm that day if they hadn’t been moving in. They heard me screaming and called the ambulance,” says Lisa.  

Lisa’s mare got her foot stuck and and backed the full 820kgs of its weight onto her body.  

“I was flattened,” she says.  

“I felt like Humpty Dumpty. I don’t if you’ve smashed an egg on the table but I felt like everything inside me was moving in different directions.” 

She was rushed to John Hunter Hospital which is where she first met Professor Zsolt Balogh.  

Professor Balogh, Director of HMRI’s Trauma and Injury Research Program, performed two major surgeries over eight months to reconstruct Lisa’s pelvis.  

Now there are thick metal plates and dozens of screws holding her pelvis together.  

“I had bone grafts, blood transfusions and my pubic bone is wired together. On an x-ray, it looks like crochet,” says Lisa.  

This was Lisa’s second major injury.  Years earlier she had sustained a terrible tibia injury where her bone was pushed out through the bottom of her foot.  

“I can wiggle my toes but I can’t move my ankle from side to side. They [the surgeons] had to cut my Achilles tendon and then I got a staph infection that resulted in a lot of scar tissue. In the end, they had to fuse my ankle so I can’t push my heel down,” says Lisa.  

Six weeks after the initial surgery for this injury, Lisa tripped on some slippery tiles and busted her tibia again.  

It was this leg injury that saw her join the paralympic dressage team.  

Her recent pelvic injury has made what was already a difficult and painful journey even harder.  

“Both injuries affect the mechanics of my seat. My left side is higher than my right side and my spine is twisted. I’m having some nerve problems and fluid build-up,” says Lisa. 

Nevertheless, she says she is talking to Professor Balogh about how to manage her injuries. 

“He is a very straightforward, honest man,” says Lisa.  

“I’m a straight shooter. We are on the same wavelength. We are both completely dedicated to the outcome that we want. 

“When I first had this injury, I sought a second opinion and every surgeon I spoke to in Australia and in Europe said that Zsolt is the best surgeon you will get in the world,” says Lisa.  

Professor Balogh is currently focusing his research efforts on polytrauma. You can read more about that here.  

You can follow Lisa Martin on Facebook here and watch her compete on September 4th, Central European Time.