Riding In Paris Would Be Like Riding In Her ‘Backyard’ For France-Born Para-Equestrian Beatrice de Lavalette

Beatrice de Lavalette began riding horses as a 3-year-old in her hometown in Versailles, France. This summer, she hopes to be back there, but this time competing as an equestrian for Team USA at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.

Though she now resides in South Florida, de Lavalette spent her first 15 years just outside Versailles, the commune 10 miles west of the French capital.

So when she learned the area’s most famous local landmark, the Château de Versailles, will serve as the host site for equestrian events at the Paralympic Games, de Lavalette was ecstatic.

The famous palace is practically “my backyard,” de Lavalette said. Before long she was hearing from childhood friends, some she hadn’t spoken to since kindergarten, saying they had bought tickets to see her. 

“(There’s) a little bit of extra pressure, for sure,” de Lavalette, 25, said. “But I’m really excited to be there.”

Though born and raised in France, having only moved to the U.S. at 18, she considered representing France only for a “nanosecond” before committing to Team USA.  

“I knew I was going to be in the States, and I knew all of the American team already,” she said.

Before moving to the U.S., de Lavalette spent three years in Belgium, which is where her journey to becoming a Paralympian. 

In March 2016, when she was 17, de Lavalette headed to the Brussels airport to catch a flight to Florida, where her parents had just moved. Waiting in line to check-in, she remembers passing the time by looking at her phone with her headphones on. A few minutes later, she woke up on the floor.

Terrorists had set off two bombs in the airport — one of them detonating just a few yards from the teen. Upon waking up, de Lavalette remembers telling herself, “I’m not dying.”

The attack ended up killing 32 and leaving more than 300 injured. Critically injured herself, de Lavalette survived but lost both of her legs and was paralyzed from the hips down. In eight years since the bombings, de Lavalette said she’s gone through more than 30 surgeries. 

She considers herself lucky for being able to get out of the airport alive that day. And she’s more than open to talk about her experience, knowing, and hoping, most people will never be able to relate to something that horrific. 

“It’s part of my life, and I’ve gotten used to that,” she said. “Being able to share my story and show people that whatever situation that they are in, there is a possibility to survive and get out of there with a good mental state and a good outlook on life.” 

Her positive mental state helped her get back on her horse, DeeDee, after the attack. Though de Lavalette had been riding most of her life, and been on a team since age 12, it wasn’t until after the injuries that she began to really dream of competing internationally — and specifically at the Paralympics.

Though DeeDee proved to be an ideal horse for rehab, to take the next step de Lavalette began working with a new horse, Clarc, nine months before the start of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. Switching from the beloved DeeDee was hard, but de Lavalette maintained her positivity and went on to finish fifth in the individual championship test and sixth in the individual freestyle in Tokyo. 

“I wish we could’ve had more time (to prepare),” de Lavalette said about Clarc. “But when you have a goal (of competing in the Paralympics) you create that relationship in a different way. It’s still there, it’s just not as strong as it could have been.”

Since 2022, de Lavalette has been now working with Sixth Sense. They rode together at the world championships in August of that year and helped the U.S. win a bronze in the team classification event. That performance earned the U.S. four qualification slots for the Paris Games.

With more than two years to prepare for the Games with her current horse, and knowing what it’s like to compete in a Paralympics, de Lavalette is much more confident heading into her competition in Paris.

“I’m not the same rider at all. I’m not even the same person I was three years ago,” she said. “As a person, as a competitor, as a teammate, everything’s improved since then.”

She said the biggest progression in her life has been dealing with mental health struggles, something that she credits to her recovery after the airport attack.

“I’ve struggled through mental health for a very long time, even prior to the accident, and it was worse after for different reasons,” she said. “But getting through that was a key moment for me to be able to get to where I’m at today.”