Beatrice de Lavalette was only 17-years-old when she was at the Brussels’ Zaventem Airport to head back to the US for spring break.
But, the next thing she remembers is total darkness and feeling like she’s being lifted off the ground.
De Lavalette had been standing next to a suicide bomber and was one of the 300 individuals injured after the airport was blasted on March 22nd in 2016.
During this attack, 32 people were killed and the ISIS claimed the responsibility for the attack.
The Inspiring Story of Beatrice de Lavalette
De Lavalette was on her phone talking to her brother and listening to music without paying too much attention to what was happening around her.
All of a sudden, it all became dark and when she was knocked down from the first bomb, she looked around and this time she knew what was happening.
She says how she thought “this couldn’t be happening”.
There was also plenty of fire, darkness, and chaos, and other desperate people screaming for help. She did the same.
One of the first responders noticed her and sprayed her with a fire extinguisher to extinguish the flames that caught her body.
She had life-changing injuries, including a spinal cord injury, second-to third-degree burns, and two leg amputations.
A Successful Woman Who’s a True Honor of Her Country
Six years after that terrible day, the 22-year-old Beatrice is a dressage rider with a bright future. She will represent the team USA in her first-ever Paralympic Games in Tokyo. Around a month after she woke up from a coma, the sweet teen cried every day.
She was in the ICU and wasn’t sure what life had prepared for her. She’s thankful that her family was there to support her. Knowing that her life wasn’t over and that she could continue living in a positive way helped her a lot during her days spent in the hospital.
A few months later, she got a visit from the American ambassador to Belgium in the hospital and they talked about the Rio 2016 Olympics. They were joking and the ambassador mentioned that it would be cool for her to be in Tokyo for the next one.
Beatrice didn’t think much about it and had no intention of becoming a para-athlete or competing at the Paralympics.
However, she wanted to continue with horseriding, her passion. She spent several months relearning horseriding and it was very uncomfortable. She had no muscle, only bones and skin, so sitting back onto the saddle without a sense of balance wasn’t easy.
But, as she built up her muscles and improved her balance, it all became easier.
This was a challenging process because riders use their legs to guide the horse and shift weight to change the mount movement. However, de Lavalette uses a whip to touch her horse from side to side for direction.
She went back to school in September 2016 and finished her first equestrian show in 2017. She appeared for the US Para-Dressage Team for the first time in 2020 January and helped the team win.
She was later chosen to represent the USA team at the Paralympic Games. She described the moment as surreal and said it all paid off because she worked very hard for it.
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