Sir Lee helped TV star return to the saddle
Lorraine hadn’t ridden horse since accident
PARALYMPIAN Sir Lee Pearson has helped TV star Lorraine Kelly conquer her fear of horse riding – a decade after she was trampled on and left badly injured.
Lee, who lives in the Staffordshire Moorlands, helped the television presenter as she mounted his horse, Zion, in scenes shown on her show Lorraine yesterday.
Afterwards Lorraine told the cameras how proud she felt to have ridden her horse. While she climbed on Zion, 14-times Paralympic gold medal winner Sir Lee was on the horse next to her. As she got in the saddle he quickly said: “That’s amazing”, to which Lorraine replied: “I never thought in a million years I would do this.”
Lorraine had been left badly injured after her horse trampled on her while attempting a jump during a charity challenge in 2012.
Her doctors said at the time how the wound to her thigh missed her main artery by millimetres, and she lost three pints of blood during an emergency four-hour operation.
She had not sat on a horse since. But in emotional scenes, the star finally got back in the saddle.
After Sir Lee coaxed her onto the horse giving plenty of reassurance, she spent at least 30 minutes in the saddle, doing several circuits of the enclosure.
’Speaking of the moment she was finally sat in the saddle, Lorraine told The Sentinel’s sister paper the Mirror she felt a “real sense of achievement” after finally summoning up the courage 10 years after the accident.
She said: “I was frightened about it. I kept thinking ‘I really need to do this, it’s a new year, you should really do this.’ But then covid happened and I’d make an excuse. But then I said to myself ‘No, I have to do this. If I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it.
“When he started to walk I was like ‘oh my God,’ but it was fine, it was absolutely fine.
“I mean I don’t think it is something I would do again but I feel I have faced my fears.”
Lorraine said that Sir Lee was instrumental in her being able to get back on the horse.
“I was scared to even get up close to a horse before – I couldn’t have done it without Lee distracting me all the time,” she explained.
The star says she was ‘lucky’ to be alive after the accident. It saw her being off work for eight weeks as she recuperated following the week-long stay in hospital.
“I was so lucky. My surgeon was incredible and the people at A&E. I went back to see them actually,” she said. “It was the 70th anniversary of the NHS and I went to see them and say thank you because obviously I don’t remember very much about it, I was in shock.”
Speaking on the show after helping Lorraine, Sir Lee said: “We actually went at her speed but just encouraged her all the way and giving her a kind of whirlwind of horsemanship – how he was reacting, and not reacting really, and how calm and relaxed Zion was despite Lorraine being, understandably, very upset and emotional.”