When Riding Is A Lifeline

In the face of chronic or terminal illness, focusing on horses can provide a welcome tonic. Eleanor Jones meets three riders competing against the odds

- Eleanor Jones

“WHEN I’m in hospital, I’m poorly Adele, I’m a patient. But when I compete, I’m the same as everyone else — and that means everything.

“I trot down that centre line and for four minutes, I’m not someone who’s dying or someone to feel sorry for, I’m just me. I’ve got a bit of me back.”

It is 10 years since Adele Edwards was diagnosed with, and treated for, ovarian cancer. But this spring, she was told it had returned and spread.

“They can’t cure me but they’re trying to keep me going as long as possible,” she says, from the hospital where she is undergoing chemotherapy treatment.

But the shattering diagnosis, the treatment, the second major surgery — “they cut me open from my belly button to my pubic bone” — and the prognosis has not been enough to keep Adele away from her horses.

“They’re my life,” she says simply. “I had my British Dressage membership renewal in April and said I might as well chuck it as I couldn’t see myself riding again, or to that standard. But in September, I qualified for the regionals. “You’ve got two choices: give up, or give it all you’ve got, and that’s what I’m doing.” The effects of the cancer — and the treatment — are harrowing, but Adele, 49, does not want to be treated any differently to anyone else.

“When I had the hysterectomy, I was riding six weeks later,” she says. “This time, it was longer; I had to have a colostomy bag and was more conscious about being OK. But I’m not going to let this stop me. I’m not going to let cancer, or the bag, define who I am.