No reining back!

Keen equestrian Lizzi Jordan was riding high until a freak illness changed her life forever. Now, having swapped reins for handlebars, she is not only back in the saddle but winning on the world stage

- David Bradford

Riding has always been a passion for Lizzi Jordan, but it was horses rather than bikes through her younger years. “I spent all my weekends at the stables with my friends,” the 26-year-old tells me over Zoom, speaking from her home in Guildford, Surrey. “It was a great social way of meeting new people and a great hobby.” Jordan was living life to the full as a bright, horse-crazy youngster, doing well at school during the week and galloping around the countryside at weekends. “Often on the craziest of horses,” she adds, “and often getting thrown off – but I loved it, and you’re pretty robust when you’re young.”

After getting a good set of grades at GCSE and then A-Level, she began a psychology degree at Royal Holloway University in London. It was shortly after completing her first year, one evening in September 2017, that she sat down for a meal that would change her life forever. When I ask her what happened, she begins by explaining that her account is, by necessity, pieced together from what doctors and her family have told her. “The body has a strange way of protecting you – a large part of 2017 I’ve lost from my memory completely.”

This much she knows: after eating a takeaway meal with her family, she and her older sister Chloe began to feel ill. “From what I understand, it started with a very bad upset stomach, extreme stomach cramps. We went to the GP, who said it would pass, just like a tummy bug.” While this was true for Chloe, who soon began to recover, Lizzi’s condition deteriorated rapidly. “My mum took me to A&E, but I was going very quickly downhill, by now delusional, talking nonsense, not knowing where I was.” Realising Jordan’s life was in danger, doctors rushed her into intensive care where she was put into an induced coma.