Sonnar Murray-Brown

The international dressage rider tells Polly Bryan how he has rebuilt his career following catastrophic injury

- Polly Bryan

ON 25 January 2009, Sonnar Murray-Brown had the world at his feet. He was 20 years old and had just won the young rider team test at the Addington High Profile show riding Catherston Liberator, almost two years into a successful apprenticeship with Jennie Loriston-Clarke. But the next day, his life changed forever when he was involved in a devastating car crash.

“We were on our way to buy ice cream, can you believe it,” Sonnar, now 32, tells me, smiling ruefully as he thinks back to that day. “I was the front passenger, my boyfriend at the time was driving and he lost control on a country road at 60mph. The car spun and we hit another car coming the other way head on. I remember waking up on the grass verge and wondering why my hair was wet and why someone was cutting offmy trousers. I didn’t realise I had broken both my legs.”

That night, Sonnar underwent nine hours of surgery as surgeons battled to save his right leg, which had smashed into numerous pieces. Doctors told Sonnar’s parents he’d never ride again, that the best they could hope for was that he might one day walk again.

Two years later, despite multiple operations, bone grafts and platings, Sonnar’s right knee was bent 45 degrees in the wrong direction and his right femur was 2.5cm shorter than his left.