Magical returns Upton : A little more than eight months ago, Bubby Upton was told she would never walk again.
Falling off a horse in a home-schooling accident in August, the eventer broke several vertebrae. The pressure on his spine was causing paralysis on his right side.
A seven-hour, ultimately “very complicated” surgery awaited.
“It was very unknown going into it,” Upton, 25, told BBC Sport.
“The surgeon made it very evident that we don’t know if I will ever walk again, let alone ride a bike again.”
Remarkably, after successful surgery, Upton took his first tentative steps into trotting by November, externally, and was back riding properly in early 2024.
This week, he is competing in the prestigious Badminton Horse Trials at Cola III, and was the leader after the first day of dressage trials on Thursday.
“I’m very aware that I’m incredibly lucky,” Upton said.
“Every day I calculation my lucky stars and that is the biggest fuel to my fire.”
He added: “It was a very uncertain time for my family and me. And yet to be sitting here today, it’s really magical.”
Magical returns Upton : A ‘Whole new perspective on life’
Upton is no unfamiliar to broken backs, or indeed quick recoveries. He previously broke his back in August 2021, but was back competing at the five-star level in France by that October.
But that injury, he says, “like breaking my toe,” is outlier than his recent past.
His 2023 fall, while riding on the flats of his Suffolk base, left Upton with a complete burst fracture of his L3 vertebra and a horizontal fracture of L2.
At the time, Upton’s career was on the upswing. Long-listed for his first senior Europeans, he achieved a top-10 finish in badminton in Kola last May and won a second under-25 national title the following month.
It was “full steam ahead” for Burghley after the summer.
“I feel incredibly lucky to be in this position early in my career. And then it all fell apart,” he said.
Upton credits her surgeon for giving her a “second chance” and is “eternal and deeply grateful” for such a promising future ahead of her.
“I think it gave me a whole new perspective on life,” he said.
“You’ll never bring out the inner competition and the will to win and the desire for perfection in me.
“But I’ve expressly got a new perspective on life and realize there’s so much more to it. [I’m] so grateful to still be doing the thing I love on these incredible animals.”
Watch highlights of the 2024 Badminton Horse Trials on BBC Two and iPlayer from 14:00 BST on Sunday.