‘Pain is only in your head’: injured Olympian still targeting World Championships

Belgian Olympian Lara de Liedekerke-Meier has been injured, breaking her collarbone in a fall at Marbach in May – but the World Championships are still her aim.

Lara was riding La La Land D’Arville, a nine-year-old home-bred out of her first championship horse Nooney Blue, in the Nations Cup class when the accident happened.

“She is the smallest of Nooney’s offspring but she doesn’t think like that – she’s opinionated,” said Lara.

“I wanted five strides off the drop to the skinny and she thought four was good, so it was a little miscommunication. She didn’t do anything wrong but she slid into it and we ended up falling.”

The mare was not injured in the fall and Lara de Liedekerke-Meier has since ridden her in the four-star short at Kronenberg this month, finishing third.

Lara broke her left collarbone, an injury she also suffered in 2024.

“I’m being helped by the surgeon who operated on me then, but we decided not to do surgery now because we’re not sure how the body will react and there is time pressure before the World Championships,” said Lara.

“If I can’t go there, it puts a lot of pressure on next year for Belgium to try to qualify for the 2028 Olympics – when you are from a small nation, you have to try as hard as you can to make it happen.”

Lara is riding with a brace around her shoulders and says it’s “not the most comfortable, but I can do all the movements”.

She may have surgery later in the year, possibly after the World Championships, or she may wait until after the Nations Cup final at Boekelo and the young horse World Championships at Le Lion d’Angers in October.

“I’m working with the physio for the Belgian national rugby team, so he’s seen more complicated broken collarbones – and when you’ve given birth to children, pain is only in your head!” she said.

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