Emily Brollier Curtis isn’t quite sure what happened on Jan. 19, 2024.
The professional dressage trainer was hacking a horse after an uneventful schooling session at her Florida winter base before her assistant, MacKenzie Wood, found her 40 feet away from the barn, on the ground with no visible injuries. Wood checked Curtis over briefly as the rider sat up and took off her helmet, assumed she just got the wind knocked out of her and quickly took her horse back to the barn. She returned to find Curtis unresponsive and not breathing, and she began to administer cardio-pulmonary resuscitation. What followed was a harrowing month that changed Curtis’ life and riding career forever.
“Me being able to talk to you, there is no other word—it’s miraculous,” she said. “I’m a pretty faith-based person. I do think there’s no other word for it than miracle. I’m thankful for that, because the best medicine in the world can’t explain why I’m OK.”
Curtis was diagnosed with what she was told was an “unsurvivable” brain injury, displaced fractures of her C1 and C2 vertebrae, as well as some broken ribs.
She’d been known as someone who could ride just about any horse and took on some of the toughest ones, rarely coming off—though the horse she fell from was considered a safe one. She always wore a helmet.
“It’s a wonderful example of, accidents happen,” she said. “My neurosurgeon said, based on my injuries, he thinks I was unconscious before I hit the ground. Whether the horse stumbled and stunned me and hit the brim of my helmet, or I passed out—I’ve never passed out before. I had zero defensive wounds. I know how to fall.”
Intubated and airlifted to St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, she underwent an emergency craniotomy less than an hour after her fall to relieve bleeding and pressure in her brain. She had a 9-millimeter midline shift of her brain, and was told a “significant” shift was anything over 5 millimeters. Anything over 7 millimeters was not often survivable. Combined with neck fractures that left a small piece of bone sitting right next to her spine, there was a possibility of her being paralyzed or unable to speak if she woke up.
“They said they see this kind of injury in head-on collisions going 80” miles per hour, she said. “I’ve been over it a billion times, what could have happened to me. And my helmet doesn’t even have a scratch on it. It’s the most bizarre thing. It was so bizarre that they taped off the farm as a crime scene because they assumed I was dying. I had a less than 1 percent probability to survive through that first night.”
It was a terrifying prospect to her family, employees and her husband, Aaron Curtis, who flew in from their Nicholasville, Kentucky, home with their 2-year-old daughter Olive Curtis.
Doctors kept Emily in an induced coma, where she spent two weeks before she started making movements, giving them hope that she wasn’t paralyzed.
“As I’m coming awake and finally wrapping my head around what happened to me, I asked my husband,” she recalled. “He said I fell off a horse and hit my head. I just looked at him and said, ‘No, that can’t be right.’ They started to determine I was going to be verbal, and by the time I left critical care, they looked at my husband and said, ‘I think she’s going to make a full recovery.’ ”
Three weeks after the fall, Emily was flown to the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, which works with brain and spinal-cord injury patients. She and her husband were told to expect a long stay, but six days later, she was discharged because she was “too high-functioning.”
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But it would still be a long road to recovery. Emily started attending occupational and speech therapy in Kentucky as her neck fractures healed. Before the accident, she was extremely fit, running 30-40 miles each week, riding 10 horses, teaching and going to the gym.
Meanwhile, her team at her Miramonte Equine took over riding her horses and her clients’ horses and running the business.
It took some time for her speech cadence to come back, but as soon as she was able to form sentences, she called her friend and mentor Jim Koford and asked him to take on the ride of her horse, Secret Royal 3. She’d only purchased the 6-year-old Oldenburg gelding (Secret—Luna) in December 2023 and knew he was special.
“I bought myself that horse of a lifetime, and then promptly broke my neck and went into a coma four weeks later. You can’t make that up!” she said with a laugh. “He is incredible. I’m so grateful for Jim to take him. I wanted Jim to put him in all these environments. He’s literally foot perfect. I think a lot of the time you get horses of that quality, but they’re quirky. You couldn’t make a better horse. He’s ungodly athletic and talented, and then he’s so kind.”
Koford said he was shocked to receive a call from Emily, saying it felt like it was coming from the grave. “I couldn’t believe it. She still laughed at my dumb jokes; it was like Emily, not just a shell of Emily. Her speech was a little slower, but it was like, my girl’s back,” he said.
Koford had known Emily for a decade, meeting her back when he was living in Kentucky. He knew she would fight her hardest to get back on a horse after her injury.
“She had this old Thoroughbred, and somehow, she had kicked, scratched, crawled her way all the way up to Grand Prix,” Koford recalled of his friend and her natural perseverance. “I was watching her ride around, and the horse had no innate talent and wasn’t terribly cooperative. Somehow by sheer will and tenacity, she just got it done. She was scrappy and tough.
“Emily is such a vibrant, happy, athletic, positive person,” he said. “She’s been hit with some of the toughest scenarios, and she just always comes out of it with smiles. Takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’. It’s just amazing, her resilience. But this one I thought, man. It was horrible. You just have to sit and wait. It’s brutal watching it from the side.”
Emily spent 2024 working hard in speech therapy and, more recently, physical therapy for her neck. In the meantime she’s enjoyed watching Koford bring “Roy” along at third level. He rode the gelding in the 6-year-old championship at the U.S. Dressage Festival of Champions (Illinois) in August, and they went on to win the open third level championship at the U.S. Dressage Finals (Kentucky) in November.
“Part of my speech therapy was going back through my text messages to try to recall whatever I could recall, and I see all these messages to Jim,” Emily said. “I was obsessed with this horse. I kept telling him how amazing this horse was.”
Emily was teaching lessons just a few weeks after her initial rehab, and in the past month she’s been given the go-ahead by her doctors to resume regular day-to-day activities, including running.
“I have said over and over again that pressure is a privilege,” she said. “This morning—at a real feel of 2 degrees—I went for a run. It’s so liberating. Everything’s a gift to me right now. I don’t care how cold it is, I’m doing a mile.”
She also got the “courage” to ask her neurosurgeon about riding again.
“He said there’s always going to be a risk because riding is risky in general,” she said. “He said, ‘Yeah, you can ride, just don’t fall off ever again.’ I said, ‘Yeah, OK!’ He said head injuries are cumulative, and mine was the mother of all head injuries.
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“It’s going to look very different for me,” she continued. “Before I would ride almost anything, so riding for me is going to be horses I know, and my staff will have to ride them first when I get a new one to make sure it’s something I can ride. I have to mitigate all risks possible.”
In November she got back on a horse for the first time since her accident, picking an older, trusted horse, Thaddeus.
“I rode him the day I had my baby and through my pregnancy,” she said. “He loves me, and I love him, and I think he knows that. He’s not a deadhead. He’s pretty sensitive and pretty go-ey, but he’s so kind to me, and he will never ever be for sale.
“Like everything with my injury, everything has escalated quickly,” she added. “I started with MacKenzie just handwalking me around the arena, and it felt fine, so the next week I said, ‘I think I can trot!’ It felt fine. My neck was tired from holding my helmet up, but it gets stronger every day. The next week I said, ‘You know, I think I can canter.’ This week I did five flying changes on a diagonal. My body knows what to do. It feels so wild. I’ll feel my horse get a little crooked, and I know exactly how to straighten him.”
Life in Emily’s world can be chaotic—with students, a toddler and many horses, she wasn’t exactly able to avoid loud noises and a low-stress environment as prescribed—but overall she says many of the things she was warned about with brain injuries haven’t come true yet.
“Brain injuries are insane, and you don’t really know what you’re going to get,” she said. “Time is the biggest factor to tell you what you’re going to be able to do. Mine is classified non-survivable. My long-term memories are gone, which is kind of sad. I knew I had a kid, but my context is gone. I know who my husband is, and my facial recognition is pretty good, but I don’t have any memories of dating him or my wedding. It’s kind of sad, but if that’s the worst thing I have, it’s OK.
“I can’t remember a ride on a horse, but my body knows how to ride a horse, so I can teach,” she added. “It’s super strange. I know people don’t quite grasp how much of my memory is gone—because [of my] cognition I’m really sharp, and my speech is almost 100 percent normal again. Problem-solving, retention and short-term memory are all great. I can make new ones, so that’s OK.”
Emily is hoping to take the ride back on Roy in time, but for now she’s enjoying her life, even though it’s been changed forever.
“I’m just grateful,” she said. “I’m grateful for everything, I’m grateful for my faith, the neurosurgeons, MacKenzie. The circumstances couldn’t have turned out better, but I’m also surrounded by some of the best people I could be in that situation.
“It’s changed my life, but I think it’s for the better,” she added. “It’s made me appreciate things that I probably took for granted before, and I think it’s going to make me a better rider because it’s going to allow me to focus on better horses and not be so distracted with trying to fix problems of horses I have no business riding. In the long run, I still get to do everything that makes me, me. My personality is still 100 percent the same, good, bad or ugly. It’s such a strange outcome. I think it will make my career better.”
Her close friends and family are both profoundly grateful for her recovery thus far, and protective of her health.
“One of the scariest things for her husband, her friends and myself is watching her ride again, but I think we’re all protective and making sure she can ride, be supported, and only on the best horses,” Koford said. “Roy will be a part of that when she’s ready.
“It’s really a lesson to all of us,” he continued. “To see someone who’s been hit with such adversity stay so positive—especially people with head trauma. It’s horrible watching people that have been through that and deal with depression and anger and rage. At least outwardly, she’s good! She puts a smile on her face, and it’s a three-ring circus at her place. There’s kids and teenagers and adults and the horses in and out. It’s just always something, and she’s at the center of it all. It’s kind of hilarious, this amazing, positive energy. And she’s surrounded by the most amazing husband and child and staff. She’s blessed with an amazing barn family.”
Do you know a horse or rider who returned to the competition ring after what should have been a life-threatening or career-ending injury or illness? Email Kimberly at kloushin@coth.com with their story.
