By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
IT was a bit of a home-coming for former Berwick Primary School student and Rio Paralympian Emma Booth.
The 25-year-old equestrian rider popped in and took a wide range of questions from the school’s holiday program kids on 7 July.
And on the way, she re-united with her former Year 6 teacher Andrew Horsburgh.
Mr Horsburgh, now assistant principal, said it was inspiring how Ms Booth had bounced back from a horrific head-on crash between her car and a jack-knifed truck in 2013.
He remembered Ms Booth as “a bit of a pocket rocket” as a student at the school.
“She was quite short among quite a few burly boys. She stood up pretty well to them.
“She had a bit of spunk about her.”
Mr Horsburgh recalled the young Ms Booth’s early love of horses and being crowned as a pony club’s champion when she was in Year 5.
“I hadn’t seen her since she left the school. It was fantastic to see her again,” Mr Horsburgh said.
Ms Booth, a former house vice-captain at the school, fielded a range of questions from nearly 50 inquisitive children and stayed back to catch up with old faces.
The kids wanted to know about the accident, how she cared for her horses, and how she’d recovered so powerfully.
“They were really curious,” Mr Horsburgh said. “Quite thoughtful questions from quite a range of kids.”
As is now folk-lore, Ms Booth had been travelling home from an equestrian event in Albury when the crash happened.
She was rushed to hospital in a critical condition after it took two hours to cut her from the wreck.
In hospital, she woke up with a tube down her throat to help her to breathe, unable to talk and unable to feel her legs.
After spending four months in hospital and another six months of physiotherapy, Ms Booth had to learn a new way to ride a horse.
Her first competition ride after the crash was in early 2014.
She is now ranked No.1 in Australia in para-equestrian riding, and is Rio Olympics-bound. Close family members will make the trip to Brazil to cheer her on.
“You feel that sense of pride, and then you hear about how excited she is about going and how passionate she is about horses,” Mr Horsburgh said.
“She was a real inspiration.”
