TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Eighth-grader Madeline Jordan and her pony jumped into victory two years after doctors wondered whether she'd recover enough from an accident to ever walk again.
Jordan, 13, the daughter of Lt. Grady Jordan, the Leon County Sheriff Department's public information officer, won the 2017 Medium Green Pony Championship at the USEF Pony Finals on August 11.
The effort she put into winning that competition pailed in comparison to what Madeline did to prove the doctors wrong after an impaired driver struck her in October 2015.
Winning Pony Finals was "awesome," she said.
But before she and her family journeyed to Lexington, Ky, she had years of things to do in Florida. She had not merely to practice riding but to practice all she needed to do to recover physically and mentally from being hit by a truck.
"It was really hard," she said of recovering. "It was a lot of long, long nights in the hospital."
She was put in the hospital by an impaired driver who hit her while she and her family were out trick-or-treating. Madeline was unable to move out of the way before the truck struck her.
Determined to walk again, and to ride ponies, she gained strength from family and friends.
"A lot of my friends that rode with me came and visited me in the hospital," she told a USEF Network interviewer. "So that really helped me."
Madeline progressed from a wheelchair to crutches and eventually to her own legs. She overcame a traumatic brain injury, a severely broken left femur, and a knee injury to her other leg.
When they got Madeline home, her parents said they knew she would return to riding.
"We pulled her other pony out of the paddock to the front porch when she was on her wheelchair," her father told USEF, "and so he went to the front porch and she was petting him."
"After all the hospital stuff, I got to see my pony Playtime, it was awesome," Madeline told USEF Network, "because I realized I was eventually get back and start riding him again, and hopefully win Pony Finals someday. "
This year's win came after a previous trip left her in the middle of the pack of competitors. The victory came after Madeline and Shamrock completed three stages - Model, Under Saddle and Over Fences - in front of from three to six judges.
On the way to victory, Madeline told herself, "Oh, that was a good jump, that was a good jump," she shared with the USEF Network. "Well, okay, at least I'll have a ribbon if they do defeat me. Then I ended up winning. That was really awesome."
Her father described the victory as overwhelming. "I think we all were little bit stunned," he told us. "We knew she did a great job. When it was all said and done she was excited."
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