As a child, Rebecca Hart had trouble seeing her disability, hereditary spastic paraparesis, beyond what it kept her from doing like the other children—which was a lot. The progressive disease impacted her muscles and spine from mid-waist down, disrupting her balance, coordination and strength. As much as she wanted to experience the physical freedom she saw in her classmates, her nondisabled brother and sister, and the other kids in her extracurriculars, her body quickly checked her aspirations.

“I had wanted to be just like everyone else,” Hart said. “I tried dancing and gymnastics, and with my disability, it just never worked out that way.”

At the time, Hart didn’t have any way to think about her differences other than as a deep disappointment; her disability kept her from the things she wanted to do and the way she wanted to be seen. For a competitive and driven child, that disconnect between brain and body was turning toxic.

“I was angry at my disability as a child,” she said. “I hadn’t yet learned through life that uniqueness can be a strength.”

So at 10 years old, when a pony ride during a family vacation inspired a sudden interest in horses, her non-equestrian parents listened. Hart told them that she wanted to ride, and she wanted to do it seriously. She knew, even before she’d started, that she would like to pursue horses for sport, not just for fun.

But it was the mid-1990s in Pittsburgh, and Hart’s parents, Sue Dobson and Terry Hart, struggled to find a trainer who would take on their newly determined daughter. Finally, they approached Ray Herhold of Hobby Horse Farm in Fairview, Pennsylvania, a hunter/jumper trainer Rebecca remembers fondly as “old school.” The traditional horseman wasn’t at all dissuaded by his new rider’s diagnosis.

“I had been turned away from other barns because they didn’t want to teach a disabled student,” Rebecca said. “They said, ‘Nope, there are therapeutic programs for that. We don’t do sport with a disabled rider.’ Ray was the only one in the area that was willing to give it a go.”

Those early days in the saddle were basic, spent mapping out what she could feel, and how she could cue the lesson horse without the typical use of her legs and seat. But the experience completely reframed the ways she’d thought about her body to that point.

“Horses became such an equalizer for me, because they didn’t care that my legs didn’t work, and I could do it just as well as the able-bodied kids,” she said. “As a kid, that’s a very important moment of just kind of coming to terms with yourself—of realizing that, ‘Hey, I’m different, but I can still do this.’

“I just remember sitting on Seaweed, who was an Appaloosa-Quarter Horse mix, and I just felt like the queen of the world,” she continued. “It was that moment, and with the support of the amazing people around me, that I kind of was able to start to come to terms with my disability. It’s an ongoing process, but that was a moment of breakthrough.”

Neither Herhold nor his lesson horses seemed concerned with what Rebecca couldn’t do—only what she could. With his able-bodied riders, Herhold would teach his students to ride as he did and to mimic the signals his horses expected. With Rebecca, a new path had to be mapped. Herhold could help her feel her way, but ultimately only Rebecca could take the lead.

“He encouraged me to use my own brain and toolbox,” she said. “He’s like, ‘I don’t know what your body can do; the only person that can really know that is you.’ He always made a point of being like, ‘You have to figure this out. I’m here to support you, but only you can do it.’ ”

Rebecca had to learn to break down her communication with the horses into the smallest pieces and then put the picture back together in a way that was all her own. She adapted traditional riding cues to work for her body. When she learned to canter, for example, she couldn’t use her outside leg; instead, she had to develop a more subtle ask, learning how to manipulate her back to move her hip to then signal the canter.

This newfound skill, the ability to break down communication to its core, became Rebecca’s riding superpower. She couldn’t rely on what her trainer knew, or even what her horses knew. She had to listen for something softer, build a relationship with her equine partner, and trust herself and her body—the body she had previously been so disappointed in.

“I don’t have the physicality to be able to force it,” she said of her riding. “I had to really work on the language that I used to ride. I think any para rider has that, because we don’t have full use of our bodies. Whatever the disability is, you have to create a unique language with whatever horse you’re on, and they just have to understand it. I think that’s also a liberating experience, because it’s just communication and understanding, kind of at the core element.”

As she progressed, the horses rewarded her by performing as they would with any other rider.

“There’s actually this medically documented thing called ‘magic thinking,’ and it’s where, if you are a kid with a disability, but you put on, say, the leotard or the ballet shoes, all of a sudden your disability will go away,” Rebecca said. “Very quickly the universe crushes that, because it obviously doesn’t work. The horses let it work; I was able to put on the breeches and the helmet, and I did it differently, but I could do it just as well.”

Horses had allowed Rebecca to make that magic real. Riding “just as well” as the other students became her motivation, creating momentum that would carry her into her career highlights: attending five Paralympic Games, helping to put her country on the podium for the first time in 2021, and finally, in 2024, bringing home team and individual gold from Paris.

Pioneering Her Path

As the older sister, Katie Hart sometimes wondered if Rebecca’s interest in horses was just a “cool hobby.” But a trip to Georgia in 2000, where Rebecca had been invited to participate in a dressage clinic and watch the selection trials for the 2000 Paralympic Games, made clear just how seriously the teenager felt about riding.

“In my recollection, that was the first time she was like, ‘This is real. I’m going to do this. I’m going to be an Olympian at this,’ ” Katie said. “At the time, I was taking ice skating lessons, and I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to be an Olympian, too!’ I now realize that was a totally different experience between the two of us.” 

Up to that point, Rebecca had been riding with Herhold on the hunter/jumper circuit, showing her first horse, a quirky Arabian named Eli who had a knack for spinning and dumping her. But on the trip home from Georgia, she couldn’t get that dressage lesson out of her head.

“That, for me, was the catalyst that made me go, ‘You know what? I want to go for high-performance sport, and I want to make the 2004 team,’ ” Rebecca recalled. “I announced that to my parents—at all of 15 years old, on our ride home from Georgia—and they’re like, ‘Sure, honey, we really don’t have a horse, and you’ve had one dressage lesson. But yes, you can definitely go to the Olympics in four years.’ ” 

However improbable that goal might have seemed in the moment, Rebecca set about carving a realistic pathway to the Games. In Georgia, she’d connected with para-dressage trainer Linda Fritsch, who specialized in training riders and horses out of her farm in South Bend, Indiana. 

“She saw [Eli and I] and went, ‘You know, you have some pretty impressive skill. Why don’t you come to my farm in Indiana and give it a go and see what happens?’ ” Rebecca said. 

The teen continued her riding lessons at home during the school year but began spending summers on Fritsch’s farm as a working student. Because she’d long identified as a jumper and been resistant to dressage, she was surprised at how suited she was to the discipline. She had fallen in love with the language of riding as a beginner, and she realized that dressage would allow her to dive deeper into honing that language. 

“[Dressage] is so cerebral; it is so technical,” she said. “I find language fascinating, and there’s a universal language in the equestrian community of, these are the aids that you use. But then each horse has their own separate dialect almost, that you have to learn for that individual horse. 

“That was what hooked me: how subtle it can be, and how much deeper of a relationship you can have with your horse,” she continued. “That was so fascinating because it let me tap into the analytical side of my brain.” 

With Fritsch, Rebecca was able to ride “proper dressage horses” and develop the skills and seat. She began showing successfully at national para-dressage competitions and leased a horse, Lego, with the goal of taking him to the 2004 Games in Athens. 

Rebecca was on the cusp of adulthood, just about to graduate high school and decide her future in horses, when she learned she hadn’t made the 2004 team. But the selectors asked her to be the first traveling alternate, and she joined the team at their training camp in Europe. 

“I was like, ‘You know what? I’m not done with this yet. I have some unfinished business here,’ ” Rebecca said. 

On that trip overseas, Rebecca’s Paralympic fate was sealed with a chance offer. She was horseless at training camp when owner Rebecca Eisner lent her the ride on Norteassa, with the barn name “Pippin,” though Rebecca later learned was better known around the barn as “Hellion.” 

“He was quite naughty for all the able-bodied riders, for whatever reason,” she said. “But when I got on him, he was like, ‘I got you.’ ” 

Immediately, she felt a connection like she never had with another horse. Growing up, her parents hadn’t had the financial means to support her much beyond weekly lessons and her little Arabian gelding, but she placed an international call home with a very big ask. 

“I was enrolled in Penn State,” she said. “I was supposed to start right after the Paralympics, and I remember calling home, and I was like, ‘Dad, I absolutely promise I will continue with school and college, but can I please bring home a souvenir?’ He was like, ‘Oh my gosh, is it four-legged and furry?’ ” 

Rebecca’s parents agreed, putting a second mortgage on their house to pull the money together to buy Pippin and bring him home across the Atlantic. 

“[My dad] was like, I want to support you, and I want you to do this, but I won’t be able to do this again,’ ” she said. “That horse was the catalyst that then allowed me to create the career that I have now.” 

When Rebecca returned home with Pippin, she began a double life as a student and dressage competitor. She trained with the para national coach at the time, Missy Ransehousen at Blue Hill Farm in Unionville, Pennsylvania, while taking night classes towards her business and accounting degree at a local satellite campus. To make ends meet, she also started work as a Starbucks barista, a position she still holds 16 years later. 

“I look back at it now, and I’m like, I don’t know where I got the energy—maybe it was all the caffeine from Starbucks—I don’t know, but I would open the store, then go to the farm, and then take night classes in the evening, all while competing and training,” she said. “It was wild, but it totally worked.”

“I look back at it now, and I’m like, I don’t know where I got the energy—maybe it was all the caffeine from Starbucks—I don’t know, but I would open the store, then go to the farm, and then take night classes in the evening, all while competing and training. It was wild, but it totally worked.”

Rebecca Hart

In 2008, her long days paid off when she and Pippin made Team USA for the Beijing Paralympic Games. The equestrian events were hosted in Hong Kong, and it was one of her first experiences traveling abroad. 

“That was probably to this day one of the wildest experiences of my life, because I was so fresh and so young when I made that first team,” she said. 

Her sister, Katie, flew to Hong Kong to join and support Rebecca at her inaugural Games, which would become a ritual for the siblings. From the stands, Katie remembers Rebecca’s freestyle as a “nail-biter,” where she held a promising third place before getting bumped off the podium into fourth. 

“That was a really memorable moment from that one for me, even though it didn’t end in a medal,” Katie said. “It was this amazing realization for me like, ‘Wow, she could actually do this’—not that I didn’t believe in her, but that just made it really real to see her come that close in her first Olympic attempt.” 

Rebecca’s Paralympic debut in Hong Kong was just that—the start of a long career of making the U.S. team. She joined the team again in London in 2012; in Rio de Janeiro in 2016; and in Tokyo in 2021, where the U.S. team landed on the podium for the first time with bronze. With each cycle, she embraced her role not just as an athlete but as a true ambassador of para-dressage. 

“She’s so just integrated into so many different aspects of what it is to be an equestrian and to be an Olympian and to be an athlete,” Katie said. “It’s such an important part of her life for her personally, and it just makes sense that there’s a public element to that, where she turns that amazing energy towards other people and brings them in, too.” 

Rebecca committed her life more deeply to the sport, relocating to Wellington, Florida, to train year-round with Jennifer Baumert and Kjersten Elliott. Her work at Starbucks also allowed her to maintain her intense schedule as a competitive rider. She enrolled in the company’s Elite Athlete Program, which supplies her with a stipend for competitions and ensures job security when she needs time away to compete. 

As the pieces of her own life came together to align with her athletic aspirations, Rebecca worked harder than ever. She often wakes around 3:30 a.m. to open Starbucks, then follows her early barista shift with more work: feeding horses, grooming, doing barn chores and riding. 

“She is literally the hardest worker in the room,” Elliott said of her student’s unrelenting schedule. “She’s not showing up at the barn and riding. She is at the barn doing everything for the horses. She’s not a princess.” 

Rebecca says that her hands-on approach to horse care is by design, a part of the horsemanship ethos she developed in her early days at Herhold’s farm, where she exchanged barn chores for lessons. She noticed a benefit to that lifestyle that she’s carried with her throughout her career. 

“We weren’t horsey, and I didn’t have the financial means,” Rebecca said. “I had to work to earn rides, so I spent a lot of time learning the care of the horse, spending time with them in the aisle and mucking stalls and doing buckets and everything. That let me really develop the relationship off the horse, which I think translates to the relationship on the horse.” 

For a rider who cared about nurturing her connection with every horse, Rebecca had one of her most meaningful horse-human partnerships yet to come. 

Floratina And The ‘Fairy Tale’ In Paris

When Floratina, a now 16-year-old Hanoverian mare (Fidertanz 2—Rubina, Rubin Royal OLD), came into Rebecca’s life at the beginning of 2023, she wasn’t looking for a new partner. Then her phone rang. 

“I had a friend call me and go, ‘I have your horse,’ ” Rebecca said. “I was like, ‘Well, I’m not really looking.’ She’s like, ‘It’s Flora.’ I said, ‘I’m going to be there in 10 minutes. I’m putting my boots on now.’ ”

Rebecca knew “Flora” from the Wellington scene. She had long been impressed with the mare, but getting on her gave her entirely new insight into the horse’s brain. 

“She was the smartest, most intelligent horse I’ve ever sat on,” she said of her trial ride on Flora, who had never been ridden by a para-dressage athlete before. “When we’re talking about languages and dialects, I swear the mare speaks English. She got it so quickly.” 

Rebecca’s longtime sponsor Rowan O’Riley also recognized the spark between the pair. After a short and successful trial, O’Riley bought the mare as Rebecca’s 2024 Paralympic prospect. Elliott, Rebecca’s coach since 2021, also knew they’d found a match that would be hard to beat. 

“Flora is a unicorn,” Elliott said. “I mean, Becca’s a hell of a rider—I’ve watched her ride a lot of different horses—but Flora is just the most wonderful creature. We’ve never longed her ever. We’ve never had to go to a show and not just hop on and feel really confident in her.” 

Rebecca, Flora and Elliott traveled to Europe in late spring of 2024 to compete and train ahead of the Paralympic selections. The pair dominated Grade III competition in CPEDIs at Fontainebleau (France), Mannheim and Hagen (Germany), and were chosen to represent the U.S. in Paris alongside Fiona Howard on Diamond Dunes, Kate Shoemaker on Vianne, and Roxanne Trunnell on Fan Tastico H. 

Rebecca called the team’s arrival at the Paralympic equestrian venue in Versailles like a “fairy tale.” The setting was picture-perfect, the crowds were large and enthusiastic, and the atmosphere was buzzing. Best of all for Rebecca, ever the competitor, the contest would be heated. 

“We were all hopeful. There was an undercurrent of expectation that adds a little bit of pressure as an athlete, but it also made you dig a little bit deeper and fight a little more for it,” she said. “I mean, the competition was fierce, and it makes it almost more meaningful when you have to kind of dig in and find that spot to come out. I had to get a personal best every single day in order to take the gold.” 

The moment she earned her first gold, in the individual test that kicked off the para-dressage competition, was made that much sweeter knowing that Katie was watching, just as she had been for each of Rebecca’s previous Games. From the stands, Katie had held herself together, just barely, as she sat among the other spectators and watched her sister finally earn an individual gold medal after decades of pursuit. 

“I got super emotional, and I was crying in the stands and trying not to scream, because they don’t want you to scream at a horse event because horses don’t like noise,” Katie remembered, laughing. “But the people sitting around us, I could see them looking at me like, ‘Are you OK?’ I’m like, ‘That’s my sister!’ and they would get all excited, too.” 

Katie fought through the crowds to reach her sister, a reunion Rebecca remembers being nearly as profound as receiving her medal on the podium. 

“My sister is so not a hugger, and I had the best hug in Paris that I’ve ever gotten from her after we won the first gold,” Rebecca said. “I was crying hysterically, not just from the gold medal, but just from this amazing hug. 

“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve arrived. I made it,’ ” she continued. 

Rebecca would earn two individual golds and help the U.S. to its team medal. But in the moments before she started her last Paralympic test, the freestyle, she made a mistake: She glanced at the leaderboard. Typically, she prefers not to know the score to beat before starting a ride, but now she was beginning her test with Dutch rider Rixt van der Horst’s 83% emblazoned in her mind. Rebecca had never broken 80%; her accounting background quickly assessed where she could gather extra points to beat van der Horst’s lead— and earn her own personal record for the third time. Minutes later, when she looked up from her final salute and saw 83.53% flash across the screen, Rebecca couldn’t control her reaction. 

“I was sobbing hysterically,” she said. “I had placed ahead of Rixt, and I couldn’t stop myself from punching the air. Then I just broke down in tears. 

“All I kept thinking about was Ray Herhold, and my parents, and all of the hundreds, if not thousands, of people that had helped me get to that point,” she continued. “Because it took me a long time—it was 25 years—and everybody had kind of given me little pieces of themselves in that process. To finally be able to give back to them on that level, it just hit me.” 

The U.S. squad ended the Games in a historic way, with a world record team score and individual medals for Trunnell, Howard and individual rider Shoemaker, in addition to Rebecca’s three golds. But always thinking about the big picture, Rebecca is excited about what Paris means for future para equestrians. With each Paralympic cycle, she’s noticed the quality of the horses and riding—as well as the public interest—has steadily risen. She’s thrilled to see that the sport that, as a child, affirmed her unique abilities is now being valued on an international stage. 

“[It’s been] such an equalizing experience as a disabled athlete to be like, ‘Yes, we have put in just as much hard work and effort as our Olympian counterparts,’ so to be acknowledged for that is very rewarding and so meaningful,” she said. 

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This article originally appeared in the January 2025 issue of The Chronicle of the Horse. You can subscribe and get online access to a digital version and then enjoy a year of The Chronicle of the Horse. If you’re just following COTH online, you’re missing so much great unique content. Each print issue of the Chronicle is full of in-depth competition news, fascinating features, probing looks at issues within the sports of hunter/jumper, eventing and dressage, and stunning photography.