GALWAY Paralympian Sarah Slattery said her seventh-place finish in last Saturday’s Grade V Freestyle final at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games was “a magical fairytale ending to an already incredible week.”
Having just missed out on qualification when finishing ninth in her individual test, Slattery was a last-minute call-up after Saturday morning’s vet inspection when Brazilian Rodolpho Riskalla was ruled out. Riding her mare Savona, she went in and rode the test of her life, scoring 71.795% to move up to seventh place. It was only the second time ever the pair had ridden their Freestyle test.
“We had gone to Paris with the goal of riding a really good individual test on the Wednesday so we could get on the team,” Slattery told The Irish Field podcast. “We hadn’t even thought about the Freestyle really. We had made one and the music was in, and I had ridden it once at home. My mother, Linda, was saying ‘Come on, we need to practice this’, me and my trainer said the goal is the team and I will never make the Freestyle!
“On Saturday morning, we had about two hours to prepare. We sat in the little tack box with the video going over the test, going over the music. To finish in seventh place was beyond my wildest dreams, it was just incredible.”
Slattery was speaking from The Netherlands where she based herself in the lead-up to the Games, stabling at her sister Sophie’s yard and training with Niels Bax. She originally flew to Ireland for the homecoming at Dublin airport on Monday. “That was absolutely incredible,” she said. The whole flight, from the stewardesses, the staff in Paris to when we landed in Ireland. All the Aer Lingus staff lined the gangway where we walked off the plane and were cheering us. When we landed there were fire engines with their lights on and Irish flags going.
“To walk out into the arrivals hall with just such a huge crowd there, it was absolutely amazing, and to see that support for para-athletes is incredible.”
Cancer diagnosis
Sarah only began riding in para dressage four years ago. A cancer diagnosis in her left arm at the age of eight led her down this path.
“To remove the tumour, the doctors had to remove tendons and ligaments in my arm and in my hand. There was a risk then that I could also lose the arm but thankfully the surgery was successful.
“They replaced the tendons and ligaments in my arm and hand with tendons and ligaments from my legs. I don’t have as much strength in the arm and my hand, I can’t make a fist, or flatten it out.”
As for what comes next, Slattery said first on the agenda is to get home to Galway and finish the house she and her husband, Jonathan Madden, started building. The 34-year-old also took this year off her day job as a beauty therapist to concentrate on getting to Paris.
“I’ll bring Savona home to Ireland at the end of September and we’ll take it easy for a month or two. She’ll go in the field and do some hacking. We’ll pick it back up in January and make a plan then for the next year. The Europeans are here in The Netherlands so we will see. Jonathan wants to finish the house, and I promised him I’ll take it easy… but now maybe he’s caught in the bug as well!
“LA is definitely in the back of my mind. But again, it’s four years, so we really just have to sit down and figure out how we’re going to go about it.”