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But before her business had even gotten off the ground, her heart, and her dedication to eventing, was tested-and it had nothing to do with her missing pulmonary valve.Īt 23, Alex’s dear friend Zoe DiGiovanni was killed in a riding accident moments after Alex and her horse had returned to the barn from a ride with Zoe and another friend. “I wanted to keep going, and that’s all I wanted to do.”Īlex learned about all aspects of the business as a working student for Doug Payne, and after college, she returned to Southern Pines to begin building her business.
#WHO KILLED CAPTAIN ALEX HE KNOWS THE WAY FULL#
“I’d always wanted to ride full time as a kid, but when I started getting out and competing more at the upper levels, when I had the opportunity to do some FEI stuff, I was just hooked,” she said. It was her partnership with Moose that sparked Alex’s decision to pursue eventing professionally. “Everyone has that one really special horse, and he is definitely the one for me.”
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“He was my first upper-level horse and became the benchmark for all horses after him,” Alex said. As a Young Rider, she represented Area II several times aboard Copperfield-known around the barn as Moose.
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She moved through the levels with the help of Marc Donovan, one of her role models who took her under his wing. The introduction to eventing became a lifestyle after the family’s move to a farm in the Southern Pines, North Carolina, area when Alex was 12. The jumping I could get on board with-though the dressage took me a very long time to warm up to!” “It was a lot of fun, particularly the cross-country. “No one there rode Western, and so I converted to English to fit in with the Pony Club and all the kids there, and took up eventing,” Alex said. When her family moved to Illinois, Alex wanted to keep riding. Alex grew up with it first in California as a child, receiving her first pony at 6 and riding in a Western saddle since she was so small. On her mother’s side, Alex’s family was always into horses-her great-grandparents, grandparents, mother, aunt and cousins all rode English. That was 31 years ago.”įinding Her Passion Photo by Pam Jensen Photography I learned, as her mom, that you can’t ever take tomorrow for granted, or plan her second birthday party, because you just don’t know.
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“This has kept her coming back and kept her sticking with rehabbing, because it’s just so painful after five open-heart surgeries. “The quality of her life is so much more important than the quantity of her years, and this is her passion,” Mary said. Every time Alex’s heart has physically begun to fail, her heart’s passion for eventing has kept her going. Mary’s decision to let her daughter risk her life by pursuing eventing turns out to have saved it. “She was a child who just wanted to grow and be happy, and I thought, Her life might not last as long as I want it to, but I want it to be the best, live-in-the-moment kind of life. “As a parent, you get tired of worrying and tired of being scared,” Mary said. On the third surgery, they simply removed the valve and informed the family that Alex’s body would compensate-until it couldn’t, and she would inevitably go into heart failure. Doctors repaired the holes and attempted twice to fix the pulmonary valve, to no avail. By the time she was 2 ½, Alex had had three open-heart surgeries. Her pulmonary valve, responsible for ensuring oxygenated blood to the body, wasn’t working, either. “We didn’t even get to choose the surgeon they just had to move on it with her condition.”Īlex’s complicated diagnosis meant her heart was one-third the normal size and had two holes. “It was very, very terrifying, because I didn’t understand the anatomy of the heart-she was born and 12 hours later they told me they didn’t know if she’d live,” Mary Griffith, Alex’s mother, said. Alex was born with hypoplastic right heart with two atrial septal defects and pulmonary atresia: life-threatening heart defects. This story first appeared in the April 2022 issue of Sidelines Magazine.Īlex Martini’s mother had more reason than most not to want Alex to jump a horse or do cross-country. Britney Grover - Sidelines Magazine Photo by Pam Jensen Photography