Para-dressage rider Fiona Howard had only one thing on her mind as she and Diamond Dunes trotted down their final centerline Sunday, moments before setting a new world record with their freestyle: staying on. The rubber band that keeps her right foot secured to the stirrup had snapped, taking away her base of support.  

“I was like, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do this.’ My right leg was doing its own thing and basically flying around,” Howard said. “But Diamond Dunes, he’s such a good boy that he at no point ever questioned it. He was like, ‘I got you, don’t worry,’ even though my leg was swinging all over the place. After I’d finished, I was leaning on ‘Dunes’ ’ neck and thinking ‘someone save me.’” 

Howard has dystonia, a neuromuscular movement disorder that causes her muscles to contract involuntarily. Walking out of the arena, all of her focus went into putting her bodyweight into the left stirrup and physically holding her right leg until she was helped back into her wheelchair. When her score came up on the Jumbotron, she didn’t process it. 

“All I was thinking at the time was, ‘I can’t fall off in the Global stadium,” she said. 

Watch their record-breaking freestyle, courtesy of USEF Network powered by ClipMyHorse.tv:

It wasn’t until well after their test, when someone congratulated her, in passing, for breaking the world record, that she realized what she and Dunes (De L’Or—Wibella, Wolkentanz) had done on the closing day of week nine at the Adequan Global Dressage Festival (Florida). Just two days after setting a new personal best score of 77.29% in the Grade II FEI Para Grand Prix A test, the whopping freestyle score of 83.26% was not just a personal best for Howard. 

“I didn’t actually believe them at first, so I made someone else check,” she said. “And they were like, ‘Oh, he really did.’ At that point it was a little bit surreal. I was so proud of Dunes. He’s truly a once in a lifetime horse. It was obviously incredible, and kind of like a fairy tale.” 

Knowing Dunes, Howard said it was no surprise he was unfazed by the equipment mishap at the end of their test. 

“He is a horse that, when he goes in a stadium, or sees other horses around him, he wants to show off,” Howard said. “He puffs his little chest out and goes, ‘Look at me!’ But then he goes out there, does his job, and then strolls out of the arena on a long rein, like he’s taking a nap. He’ll finish the test and be like, ‘OK, yeah, that was my job. Now I’m going back to sleep.’ ”  

Dunes, a 12-year-old gelding owned by Howard and Hof Kasselman, had never been a para-dressage horse before partnering with Howard last March. At the time, she wasn’t actively looking for another horse. But he lived only minutes away from her barn, so she went to try him anyway. Though their first ride wasn’t perfect, Howard saw something special in him from the moment she sat on him. 

“The first ride, I couldn’t really get him to go forwards at all,” she recalled. “He just was a little bit like, ‘What? I don’t really understand what you’re asking.’ But the thing I fell in love with, from the beginning, was every time I’d be like, ‘No, that wasn’t quite what I was asking,’ he’d be like, ‘OK, well, what about this?’ And he would keep trying to give me different answers, until we figured it out and he’d get it right.”

“I think that’s so rare to find in a horse, and so important for para horses,” she added, “because at the end of the day, I probably am going to be accidentally asking for half-passes and shoulder-ins ends stuff when I don’t mean to.” 

The gelding was quickly put to the test, when Howard competed him in at the March Ocala CPEDI in 2024, just days after sitting on the Hanoverian for the first time. Any doubts she may have harbored about the gelding were permanently put to rest after the pair scored over 72% in every test of their debut CPEDI debut. 

Since then, the pair has only become more competitive. In their first year together, they earned top honors in all but two of their 15 international starts together. At the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris, Howard and her teammates brought home three gold medals, a record for the United States. 

Howard was based with trainer Nicole Wego-Engelmeyer in Germany in the lead-up to the Games with two horses, Dunes and her previous international para-dressage partner, a 13-year-old U.S.-bred Westphalian gelding (Johnson TN—Sigur Ros, Sandro Hit) named Jagger. Originally, the plan was to go back to riding Jagger, after the Paralympics, but Howard wasn’t ready to let Dunes go. Thankfully, Dunes’ owner Francois Kasselmann was on board with her change of heart. 

“I was a bit like, ‘He can’t go anywhere. I love him too much. He’s staying,’ ” she said. “So we shipped him back to the U.S., and I’m continuing to ride him, and we continue to grow our partnership.” 

Though she loved the whirlwind of qualification season, Howard has welcomed the change of pace since Paris. She splits her time between Boston and Wellington, Florida, and gets to spend a lot of time with Dunes when she is down south. 

“It has been so nice to continue building our partnership bond outside of selection trials and this competition and that competition,” she said. “I’ve really spent a lot of time with him since Paris. I live on the farm that he lives at, and I try and do as much of his care as possible every day.” 

The chestnut gelding’s humorous personality makes him good company, Howard said. 

“He’s super goofy,” she said. “He’ll try and steal our Starbucks drinks in the morning, so you have to keep a really close eye on that. He also will take bananas right out of your hand, and bananas are my pre-show snack. There have been times that I’ve gone to peel my banana and eat it, and he’s just grabbed it. And I’m like, ‘Oh, OK, I guess that’s yours now.’ ” 

Looking to the future, Howard has her eyes on the 2028 Paralympic Games in Los Angeles. Between now and then, she hopes to compete Dunes in some CPEDIs in Europe, which will allow her to reconnect with Jagger, whom she left in Germany for Wego-Engelmeyer’s daughter to compete in the FEI Children’s division. And while she’s campaigning Dunes at the moment, Howard gives much credit to Jagger for her competitive success.

“What he taught me, I think, is why I am able to ride Dunes the way I can,” she said.

Whatever comes next for her and her horses, Howard knows she’ll need the support of her village. Her world record-breaking freestyle was particularly meaningful, she said, as her friends and family came out in droves to watch it lives. 

“It was just amazing to look to the side and see so many people of our village there. I had a group from church, I had my friends from Tennessee, Dunes’ vet, and his farrier there. And the surgeon that saved my life in Boston in 2019, she flew down to Florida to watch me this past weekend too,” said Howard. “It made it that much more special.”