Meet three para-dressage athletes who may help shape the future of the sport
By Amber Heintzberger
Reprinted from the September/October 2025 issue of USDF Connection
The sport of para-equestrian dressage is becoming a powerful showcase of athleticism, resilience, and horse-human connection. Let’s meet three rising competitors who are transforming personal challenges into competitive ambition and who are finding new ways to be successful in equestrian sport.
Beyond Therapeutic Riding
For Paige Schmidt, horseback riding was originally therapy, not a sport. Schmidt, 21, was born with cerebral palsy, and her family enrolled her in therapeutic riding when she was just 18 months old.
“I rode for physical therapy until I was around eight,” says Schmidt, of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. By then, the horse bug had bitten: “After that, I kept riding whenever I could, eventually getting into dressage.”
Now studying digital marketing at the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater, Schmidt competes in Grade III para-dressage. In 2023 she leased Kimique, a tricolor pinto American Warmblood mare owned by Stefanie Lenz, and set an audacious goal: to qualify for the Adequan®/USEF Para-Dressage National Championships at the US Dressage Festival of Champions. Within eight months, she had placed third overall at the competition, held in Illinois at HITS Lamplight Equestrian Center.
“The Festival was kind of overwhelming at first,” Schmidt admits, “but I had two amazing members of the para-dressage team coach me through it: Ellie Brimmer and Sydney Collier. They just offered to help me and they were like my lifeline, because that was my first nationals and I didn’t know what to expect. They were a huge help.”
Schmidt’s current equine partner is Royal Rhapsody, a 20-year-old Oldenburg mare leased from her trainer, Linda Sorensen. While the pair builds their partnership, Schmidt is focusing only on local shows this year, explaining, “I want to give us time to grow together. Next year we’ll be ready for Festival again.”
Beyond the pride of competitive achievement, para-dressage has given Schmidt newfound mobility and mental strength, she says.
“The horses help me find a calmness in my body I can’t access any other way,” she says. “It’s emotionally, mentally, and physically challenging, but I know I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”
With her eye on making a future US Paralympic Games team, Schmidt continues to strive to improve her skills in the saddle. And her mom, Val, remains her biggest supporter, she says.
“She wasn’t a horse person,” Schmidt laughs, “but she’s had to become one.”
Career Pivot
Hunter/jumper professional Elizabeth Welch, 48, had a thriving training business at her bustling South Carolina farm when serious injuries and subsequent complications changed her equestrian trajectory for good.
In 2020 Welch took a bad fall off a client’s horse, and after surgery for a catastrophic knee fracture was left with an incurable nerve disease, as well. She spent about a year in a wheelchair and underwent additional surgeries and extensive therapy, but has permanent disability in her affected left leg.
Read more about Elizabeth and Baltico in An Anchor in the Storm!
With the support of friends, mentors, and the Emerging Athletes list, Welch pivoted to dressage. She now operates E.W. Dressage, a dressage-focused training barn near Charleston, and took up para-dressage.
“I still love the jumping world,” Welch says. “But I knew it was time to shift disciplines and protect my body while still staying in the sport.”
Welch’s para-dressage partner, Baltico BRH, is a seven-year-old PRE (Pura Raza Española) gelding that she sourced from trainer Enrique de Benito in Spain, at the suggestion of friend and former trainer Michelle Folden, who has a dressage barn in Johns Island, South Carolina.
“He was just three when I bought him,” Welch says. “At the time I hadn’t been classified yet, so I left him for training and to be gelded before importing him.”
With Amanda Persons as her coach and a grant from the US Para-Equestrian Association’s Jonathan Wentz Memorial Fund, Welch has been focused on her own training and moving up to FEI competition. Though she had to pause her goal of qualifying for the US para-dressage national championships at Lamplight this year due to a family loss, she is developing a freestyle and tells USDF Connection that she was considering pursuing a wild-card invitation.
“The para community is so supportive,” Welch says. “My first CPEDI [FEI para-dressage competition] was incredible. Everyone welcomed me. It’s not just about medals; people want to see each other succeed.”
“This sport gave me purpose after injury,” she says of para-dressage. “It reconnected me with a community I thought I’d lost.”
Engineering Solutions
Like Welch, Victoria “Vicqui” Yu was an avid able-bodied equestrian who found her way to para-dressage after life threw her a major curve ball.
A former jumper rider and engineer who had realized a longtime dream when she purchased her own farm in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, Yu, 35, suffered a stroke in 2019—during a riding lesson, no less—that left much of her left side paralyzed.
Yu had “no use of my arm, some of my leg, and I couldn’t feel where my body was in space,” she says. Even with prompt medical care, the damage was extensive. According to Yu’s mother, Will Yu, a nurse, a brain bleed required a craniotomy to relieve pressure on her daughter’s brain.
Vicqui Yu has used her toolbox of skills to adapt. Although she initially was in a wheelchair after her stroke, her determination has helped her to achieve two of the three goals she set for herself: to walk, ride, and run again. She’s not back to running yet, but she has surpassed every other expectation, including becoming the top-ranked Grade III Intermediate para-dressage athlete in the country.
Today Yu rides one-handed using ladder reins, and she uses adaptive stirrups to stabilize her paralyzed foot. Her mount, Carrera GH, a Contucci daughter owned by Yu’s coach, Tami Glover, is a 20-year-old Hanoverian who previously struggled to keep her cool off-property. But when Yu got on the mare, something clicked.
“She picked me, and I picked her,” Yu says. “It’s like we found each other at just the right moment. It’s kind of cool because my owner and rainer [Glover] said she’s never performed at this level because she didn’t want to do this level of collection. She had never been past Second Level, but now she looks like a Grand Prix horse!”
The stroke left Yu with cognitive deficiencies that forced her to abandon her engineering career because complex math became too difficult, and she’s now receiving disability assistance, she says. But she mentors other para-equestrians as well as people who have suffered strokes or traumatic brain injuries, both consulting on adaptive equipment and helping aspiring para-dressage athletes to navigate the classification and competition processes. She says her engineering background is particularly useful in helping her to determine the best use of adaptive equipment for para athletes.
Meanwhile, Yu’s family has rallied around her. Her father returned to work to help out financially, her siblings assist with farm tasks, and her brother moved in with her to help with daily tasks.
“She’s doing everything on her own now—trailering, managing her farm,” Will Yu says. “It’s incredible.”
The Future of Para-Dressage Is Now
The next generation of para-dressage athletes is not only chasing national titles and international dreams; it is helping to reshape the public’s perception of what people with physical disabilities can achieve, both in sport and in life.
Amber Heintzberger is a freelance writer and photographer based in South Orange, New Jersey. A lifelong horsewoman, she has experienced firsthand the therapeutic benefits of time spent with horses since a 2023 COVID infection led to a variety of health challenges. She is now experiencing the horse world from a new angle as the mother of a horse-crazy teenage girl.
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