IRISH Olympic dressage rider Abi Lyle’s foray into eventing is taking a forced pause after she fractured a vertebra in a fall this week. Lyle was training for an arena eventing competition with the dressage mare Francesca II, when she fell after a “massive buck”.

Lyle was having a jumping and cross-country lesson with Nigel Taylor at Aston le Walls when the fall happened. “We’d jumped the whole show jumping course, and I was halfway through the cross-country. She’d been jumping amazingly, and there’s a little hill where you go from one arena to the next. She surged up the hill, full of excitement, but when we got to the top, she threw in a massive buck and twisted to the right – and I just kept going straight!” she told Horse & Hound.