Saturday, Feb. 15, 2025

Former Junior Dressage Winner Starts New Chapter In Para-Dressage

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Wellington, Fla.—Jan. 24

Three weeks ago, Claire Merrill-McNulty had no plans to go down centerline at the Adequan Global Dressage Festival. As a junior, she’d been as competitive as they come, competing at the Adequan/FEI North American Junior And Young Rider Championships (Kentucky) twice and earning individual gold and freestyle silver with Checkmate in 2015.

Two years later a freak accident changed the course of her riding career. She’d reached down to pet Checkmate, and he spooked. In the process, the reins of her double bridle wrapped around her left elbow, leaving her with a dislocated pinky, a fractured hand and a smashed elbow.

She lost feeling in her ring finger and pinky, and initially the doctors assured her that the feeling would return. She spent three months out of the tack recovering, but once she got back in the saddle she realized she couldn’t hold her reins. Ultimately, doctors determined she had severed her ulnar nerve, the nerve that transmits signals to the muscles in the forearm and hand.

As a junior Helen Claire Merrill-McNulty was an individual gold medalist at the 2015 Adequan/FEI North American Junior And Young Rider Championships (Ky.) Ann Glavan Photo

Initially Merrill-McNulty attempted to keep riding. She tried weaving her reins through her fingers and using a liberal amount of sticky spray.

“It was so frustrating because I was training at such a high level beforehand, and then I was constantly just like, ‘OK, how can I just hold onto the reins?” That was what I thought about the entire time [I was riding],” she said. “It was really, really hard from a psychological standpoint to have to back down.”

She eventually made it back to the show ring, and the pair made their small tour debut in spring 2018, with hopes they could do the U25 level. Ten days after their second show at the level, Checkmate died. While the exact cause is unknown, he was hemolytic, so veterinarians suspected he ate something toxic, but there was nothing they could do to save him.

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“It was awful, but I was like, ‘You know what, the universe has spoken. Take time off and just go ahead and focus on school.’  It was all I could do at that point,” she said.

She studied biology at the University of Mississippi and is a teacher with Upper Echelon Academy in Wellington, which was founded by jumper rider Clementine Goutal and caters to student athletes, especially riders.

In 2023, Merrill-McNulty came back to horses, but she headed to the jumper ring.

“I had lost so much confidence that I was like, ‘You know what, I’m going to try jumping,’ ” she said. “I had to be confident. You can’t go into the ring and be jumping and be [scared], you have to go for it. And also too with jumpers you can use loop reins; you can wear a brace. And it really helped my confidence.”

Claire Merrill-McNulty started showing in the jumpers with Cascade Z in 2023. Sportfot Photo

Since then, she’s been competing Cascade Z in the jumpers and equitation, and in her spare time traveling with her cousin, para-dressage rider Fiona Howard, to groom at international competitions, including to the Paris Paralympics, where Howard earned triple gold with Diamond Dunes.

“It was amazing,” she said. “As someone who had been out of sort of doing the high-pressure sport for quite some time, it was so nice to kind of be able to experience that again, especially with the whole team.”

Two months ago, Howard and her teammate Kate Shoemaker approached Merrill-McNulty with an idea: Her injury qualified her to do para-dressage, so why not try it?

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Three weeks ago the plan started to solidify: They had horses she could ride, so she started getting her paperwork together with her doctors. On Monday, she was approved to get classified, the process by which potential para-dressage riders are assessed and assigned to a competition grade—Grade I to Grade V, based on the severity of their physical disability, with Grade I being most severe. On Wednesday, Merrill-McNulty was classified as a Grade V rider, and on Thursday she showed for the first time in the FEI Para Intermediate Grade V Test A at AGDF 3.

She had ridden Colijn, an 18-year-old Dutch Warmblood (Son De Niro—Dolly, Ulster) owned by Howard and also shown by Shoemaker, four times before this week’s show at Global. They scored a 66.78% after battling some tension caused by an incident with another horse in the warm-up.

“He’s very sensitive, and so he just, like, jumped in my lap, and I’m like, ‘It’s OK.’ I held his hand, and we definitely bonded over it,” she said. “He didn’t want to get anywhere near the [boards], so I’d be like, ‘OK, like, don’t look at it.’ But he was so good; I’m proud of him, all things considered.

“It’s been so fun being here, and it’s been a real full-circle moment, because the last time I showed in this ring was with the horse that gave me this injury,” she added.

Claire Merrill-McNulty made her return to the international ring at the Adequan Global Dressage Festival (Fla.) with Colijn, this time in the FEI Para Intermediate Grade V Test A. Kimberly Loushin Photo

While Merrill-McNulty is fully committed to making a go at para-dressage—she’s got a horse that is currently transitioning from able-bodied Grand Prix to para—she’s not leaving the jumping world behind. She is, however, taking a bit of a break from it as she relearns her dressage seat.

“Obviously riding in jumpers versus dressage is so different,” she said. “You ride completely differently. Jumpers, you’re so relaxed. Your body has to be so relaxed when you ride, except your calves have to be tight on the horse, whereas in dressage it’s the opposite. Your body has to be nice and tight, and your lower leg has to be a little softer, so I’m just taking time [focusing on dressage] to get reacquainted before I start jumping again.”

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