TITLE: Riding High

Doctors predicted he would never walk, talk or pass the mental level of a three-month-old but dressage champion Mark Frenzel is poised for the Paralympics.

By Glynis Horning

Mark Frenzel cuts a slight but commanding figure as he circles the practice ring on his favourite bay mare, Wanda Fisi. Even in the soft drizzle of a Summerveld summer afternoon, the horse’s powerful flanks gleam between his frail thighs, the contrast underscoring the centaur-style synergy between boy and animal. Gripping the reigns in his one good hand, Mark guides Wanda through a series of delicate dressage moves, the two stepping proudly as one, printing an intricate dance map into the mud. His eyes shine with excitement and delight.

It’s still there when Mark pulls up beside a metal ramp, and a young groom reaches across and lifts him easily from the saddle. For a second you imagine you’re hearing the rip of Velcro as he and his steed are parted. But it’s just Mark’s peel of laughter, as he’s lowered gently into a waiting wheelchair, and pushed down the ramp to reality.

Reality is that this 19-year-old has no use of his legs, and until recently was entirely paralysed down one side. He’s been cerebral palsied since birth. Today he is a dressage champion and a proud member of the South African team that will compete in the Para-Dressage World Championships in the United Kingdom in July, and if all goes according to plan, he will be included in South Africa’s Paralympics team.

MAUDELENE Frenzel, was queuing in Checkers at 5pm on September 6, 1988, when she felt the unmistakable tug of a labour pain. But it was only when others followed at alarmingly steady intervals that she allowed herself to believe it - her baby was not due for 11 weeks. A mother of two, she returned home and cooked dinner for Dwayne, five, and Shaun, two, called staff to fill in at the crèche she ran from her Wierda Park home, and finally allowed her anxious husband Ed, a communications company senior manager, to drive her to Pretoria West Hospital. At 10pm their third son was born.

Mark weighed 1,6kg, and Maudelene just had time to notice that his head was no bigger than a tennis ball before he was put on a respirator and whisked into an incubator. For two weeks, all she could do was watch achingly over him as he lay there like a tiny bird in a nest of tubing. When she was eventually allowed to hold him, he fitted easily into her two cupped hands – a mere flutter of life.

The flutter grew slowly stronger as Mark filled out on the breast milk Maudelene meticulously expressed. By six weeks he weighed 2,4 kilograms and she was told she could take him home. But 24 hours later he stopped breathing. Back in hospital Mark was diagnosed with pneumonia and put on a respirator again. This time doctors were uncertain if he would live or die. Six frightening weeks later his small body contorted in spasm - they were sorry to inform her that her son was cerebral palsied.

Cerebral palsy (CP) is one of the most common congenital childhood disorders, usually caused by brain damage before or during birth or in the first years of life. Premature babies run a higher risk of it, but Maudelene believes Mark’s CP was caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain after the pneumonia bacteria attacked his lungs. Before that he had been progressing well.

CP affects muscle tone, movement and motor skills and can lead to a slew of other problems, from vision, hearing and speech disabilities to learning and behavioural ones. It has no cure. When Mark was 10 months old, Maudelene had him evaluated by a neurologist, although she was advised to wait until later. She desperately needed to know the severity of his disability. “Once you have the facts about something, you can cope,” she says.

The facts were hard. Mark was paralysed down his right side and spastic. His family was told he would never walk, talk, or progress intellectually beyond the level of a three-month-old – that the motor and intellectual parts of his brain were non-existent, and they should put him in a home.

But Maudelene and Ed would have none of it. Their instinctive reaction was that no doctor would tell them what their child couldn’t do - they would never put him in a home, they would care for him themselves. “When you decide something,” says Maudelene, “it becomes much easier to accept, and to work with it the best way you can.”

SHE didn’t recognise it at the time, but the best way revealed itself the day Maudelene finally drove Mark home from the hospital at age two. After commuting the 23 kilometres between his ward and her work several times a day, feeling guilty each time she left him or her 28 tiny crèche charges, she was as ecstatic as he was. But her most vivid image of the day is of passing a field of horses. Mark pointed and made a massive fuss - he was entranced.

The image faded in the flurry of caring for him and for his energetic but understanding brothers and the crèche babies. But it resurfaced two years later when the family moved to Durban, and Mark began visiting his grandmother, Beulah Muller, at Shelley Beach on the South Coast. Beulah lived close to Old McDonald’s animal farm and that instantly became his favourite place. At four he was too young to be confined to a wheelchair, which could discourage mobility, so he got everywhere by crawling. And when he grew impatient he’d simply lie down and roll. He was mesmerised by the horses, so Beulah sat him on one, and someone walked next to him, supporting him, while someone else led the horse. At last he had legs that worked, even if they weren’t his own. “He couldn’t stop smiling!” says Beulah.

Back in Durban, Maudelene enrolled Mark with South African Riding for the Disabled, then in private therapeutic riding classes with Tracey Cumming. His progress was astounding. There are many different benefits for disabled people who ride horses, explains Ricky Smith, founder of the Nicholas Rey Foundation Trust for people with horse-related injuries. (Nicholas, the son of former Miss South Africa Penny Coelen Rey, was paralysed playing polo; Ricky’s right leg was crushed when she slipped from a bolting horse and others galloped over her.)

Research has shown that levels of the feel-good hormone serotonin are affected in the disabled, and horses can detect this from up to 25 metres. This explains the kind of magic connection these large, loving, patient creatures seem to have with people who have emotional pain or disabilities. Riding also has enormous physical benefits for the disabled, and Mark can attest to them all. Their balance improves, which stimulates normal body movement and co-ordination, and the brain receives the stimulation that ordinary people receive from walking. Horse riding also helps with low muscle tone, while the body heat of the horse helps ease spasticity. And as the brain produces more serotonin, riding promotes positive moods, self-pity is redirected, and confidence grows.

It was extraordinary for Mark’s family to watch how his muscles would start to relax when he was in the saddle. As time went by he sat straighter, his balance got better, and his confidence soared. Contrasting this with his demeanor at the less-than-attentive special-needs school where she had enrolled him, Maudelene applied for permission from the Department of Education to home school him.

It took much love and patience, but with the unswerving belief and support of his grandmother and other extended family, she persisted. And Mark responded, mastering numbers and the ability to calculate, and acquiring a vocabulary she says now outstrips her own. They focused on skills Mark would need to live an independent and fulfilling life, and finally did a special curriculum course on Horses of the World, where he studied everything from their history to their biology.

By then Mark’s progress in the saddle was equally impressive, and he had graduated to dressage classes with Kathy Kirkpatrick, a KZN champion dressage rider.  She quickly saw that Mark had a strong competitive spirit and determination to succeed. In 2001 he entered the first-ever National Disabled Dressage Championships in Gauteng. He was graded a 1A rider – the highest level of disability – and although he wasn’t placed, three judges from the International Paralympics Equestrian Committee who watched him predicted a great riding future for him.  By the following year he had notched up the highest national score in his category at the South African Championships, and was chosen to represent the country in the Belgian Open Disabled Dressage Competition.

AT 13, Mark was the youngest competitor there. He got off to a rough start when he was taken over the course in a practice session and his wheelchair stuck in the sand, spilling him out head over wheels. Then during the event itself the saddle slipped under his horse, and it leapt from the arena to avoid him as he fell again. From her seat high in the stands, Maudelene and could only watch helplessly as her son motioned to be put back in the saddle. He did a lap of honour for the roaring crowd. “One thing about being spastic is that you learn early to roll when you fall,” she says. “Just as well my disability counts for something,” quips her son with a characteristically puckish grin, pushing back a flop of fringe with one slender hand. “I always laugh when I fall, what’s the use of crying. Besides, what’s the worst that can happen – wind up in a wheelchair?”

Mark’s humour hides a steely resolve to stand on his own two feet – “metaphorically speaking, of course.” But it’s also part of what his grandmother describes as his great warmth and kindness right from the get-go. Beulah fondly recalls how after having tea, her young grandson would often crawl or roll to each cup, put it on a tray on the floor, and pull the tray to the kitchen. He could just reach the sink, but he’d haul himself up and wash those cups. ‘He’s still like that,’ smiles Maudelene.

Mark says he does it to prove to others, and to himself, that it’s possible. “If you believe you can do something, you will do it. It’s got me this far.”

“THIS far” is to the brink of the 2008 Paralympics in Hong Kong. After the Belgium debacle, Mark went on to win his class at the Nedbank SA Disabled Championships for the next three years running, represented the country in the Para-dressage junior event in England in 2005, and attended an invitation training camp near London in 2006. Then last year he reached for his ultimate dream – to be nominated for the Paralympic dressage team.

Just two days before the trials his right hip bone slipped from its misshapen socket in an excruciating dislocation. Mark could take no painkillers for fear of infringing doping rules, but there was no question of dropping out – his hip has been deteriorating for some time, and this will be his only shot at the Paralympics.    As a 1A rider, Mark was entitled to have a commander to call his test for him in the arena, but opted to go it alone, guiding his borrowed horse over a complex set course, then through a routine he choreographed with the help of his coach and trainer to Johnny Clegg’s rousing Impi. When the four names on the short list for Hong Kong were announced, and he was among them, Mark was overwhelmed with relief and elation. His only concern was that Wanda, who hopes to take to the Paralympics if he’s chosen for the team, will handle four months in quarantine. “She has such a kind and willing personality, she’ll do anything to please you, but this seems quite a lot to ask,” he says fondly, reaching up from his wheelchair to stroke her muzzle. 

And when the games are over, or should something keep him from going, real life will continue to provide challenges of another sort. These are about to include starting a career in reflexology, which Mark studied last year in an internationally-recognised ITEC course. Riding has significantly improved the use of his hands, and an aunt has long told him he gives great foot massages: “We all need a way to give back to others as well as support ourselves,” he says.

He already runs a small catering company that his parents help him operate from a camping trailer fitted with a veld kitchen. They sell rolls, burgers and beverages at horse shows, Maudelene and Ed driving and cooking while Mark takes the orders and handles the cash. “It’s a blast!” he grins. “I love horses and people – you should see me dance in my wheelchair! - and this keeps me close to both.”