Brave Lorraine Kelly has told how she “faced her fears” head-on after getting back on a horse for the first time in a decade after a horror accident in which she nearly died.
The star was left badly injured after her horse trampled on her while attempting a jump during a charity challenge in 2012.
Her doctors said at the time how the wound to her thigh missed her main artery by millimetres, and she lost three pints of blood during an emergency four-hour op.
The star has not sat on a horse since. But in emotional scenes to be aired today (Tuesday) on her show Lorraine, the star is seen finally getting back in the saddle.
Choking back tears, the presenter manages to mount a horse called Zion after teaming up with Sir Lee Pearson, a 14-times Paralympic Games gold medallist.
He manages to gently coax the visibly nervous star onto the horse after reassuring her she would be OK. In the end she spends at least 30minutes on the animal, with several circuits of the enclosure.
Speaking to the Mirror, Lorraine says she felt a “real sense of achievement” after finally summoning up the courage tens years after the accident.
“I was frightened about it. I kept thinking ‘I really need to do this, it’s a new year, you should really do this’. But then Covid happened and i’d make an excuse. But then I said to myself ‘No, I have to do this. If I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it’. “
Speaking of the moment, she was finally sat in the saddle, Lorraine says: “When he started to walk I was like ‘oh my God’, but it was fine, it was absolutely fine. I mean I don’t think it is something I would do again but I feel I have faced my fears,” she says.
Lorraine says how the accident had shaped her life up until now. Everytime she heard or saw a police horse in central London - or even saw the Changing of the Guards outside Buckingham Palace - she was left anxious.
“You see them and you hear the clippety clop behind you in London and now when I hear the clippety clop, I know I won’t be scared now,” she admits.
Lorraine said that Sir Lee was instrumental in her being able to get back on the horse.
“I was scared to even get up close to a horse before - I couldn’t have done it without Lee distracting me all the time,” she explains.
The star says she was “lucky” to be alive after the accident. It saw her being off work for eight weeks as she recuperated following the week-long stay in hospital.
“I was so lucky. My surgeon was incredible and the people at A & E. I went back to see them actually,” she says.
“It was the 70th anniversary of the NHS and I went to see them and say thank you because obviously I don’t remember very much about it, I was in shock.”
The wound to her thigh left a nasty scar which Lorraine says she is finally accepting of after years of being incredibly self-conscious.
“It looks like a shark has taken a chunk out of me,” she says. “I do remember I posted a picture, a summer picture, and someone said that it must have been photoshopped because I had a bulge at the top of my leg in the bikini shot. I was like ‘no, no, no’. It’s actually my scar. I own it a bit more now. I used to always cover it up with a sarong when I wore a swimming costume but now I go swimming and I don’t care.”
She adds: “It doesn’t matter, these things are very much part of you and you shouldn’t feel bad about it at all.”
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