Four-star eventer Jonathan Holling broke his leg in a fall from a young horse on March 14 in Ocala, Fla.

Holling was competing in a three-phase schooling event at the Florida Horse Park and fell at the water jump on the training level course when his horse stumbled on landing from a drop in.

All was fine until the horse tried to get up and stepped on his left leg, breaking the fibia.

“The good news is if you were to break a bone in your lower leg, that’s the one to break. It’s the one that bears the least amount of weight of the two,” he said. “He jumped into the water off a little bank and I’m not really sure what happened, but he obviously misread it and when he landed, he stumbled and rolled underneath me. I got shot loose, which was not a huge deal—my air vest inflated, which was good and I hit the water pretty softly, relatively speaking. I was fine, but when the horse went to get up, he trampled all over me. Fortunately I was wearing that vest and my helmet because he got all over me—there’s marks all over my vest.”

His mount was uninjured, but Holling is now awaiting an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon to find out if he’ll require surgery.

“He’s a lovely horse. Babies make mistakes sometimes,” he said. “It just goes to show you, with all this talk about safety in the sport, sometimes it can just happen training at home too.”

Holling’s spring plans for his top upper level horses, Zatopek B and Proper Timing, are now up in the air. Both horses were entered in the Rolex Kentucky CCI****.

“At home, it’s been pretty amazing,” said Holling, 38, of Ocala. “Everyone from my students to the core group of professionals down here have all offered to help. At this point, I haven’t really committed to anything until I know what my timeline is going to be. I think [Rolex is] a bit of a long shot, but I’m waiting to hear what [the doctors] have to say and then I’ll make a decision and go from there.

“I was pretty fortunate—it could have been a lot worse,” he added.