‘I have beaten every odd.’ How this Columbus rider turned setback into comeback

Olivia Oney knows what it’s like to get back in the saddle.

After a severe car wreck, the nationally ranked equestrian feared she’d be paralyzed and unable to ride again. But four years later, she’s back — not in the show ring, but at the helm of Double O Sport Horses, a growing horse training and sales business she built from the ground up.

The last time the Ledger-Enquirer caught up with Oney in May 2017, she had just signed her National Letter of Intent to compete on Mississippi College’s equestrian team — becoming the first equestrian signee in Columbus High School history.

A lot has happened since then.

The 26-year-old has spent the last several years navigating riding, the equestrian industry and a setback that nearly took her out of both. Now, she’s back on track and running the kind of operation she always dreamed of having.

“I’ve worked my entire life for this,” Oney told the Ledger-Enquirer. “I went through a really catastrophic injury and still managed to do this. I have beaten every odd that there is.”

The road to Double O

After riding at Mississippi College in Clinton, Mississippi, for a semester, Oney realized she wanted to focus on horses full-time. She returned to Columbus and began working at the barn she now leases. From there, she moved to Lexington, Kentucky, where she worked with 13-time Grand Prix event winner Scott Keller.

She returned to Georgia in 2020, working at Pleasant Oaks Equestrian Center in Byron and Peace Stables in Senoia. Later that year, Oney moved to Miami for her first job as a horse trainer.

After a year in Florida, she decided she wanted to do her own thing and signed a lease on a barn in Midland. But two weeks before leaving Miami to start her business, a car accident turned her plans upside down.

The accident

In January 2021, Oney was riding home in an Uber in Miami when the car was rear-ended by a vehicle going 117 miles per hour, she said.

“The paramedics came and I went to the hospital, and I first thought, ‘Oh my God, am I going to be able to ride again?’ And then it became ‘am I going to be able to walk again?’” Oney said.

The then-22-year-old had shattered her pelvis in four places and needed a 12-hour surgery to reconnect her pelvis and spine. She spent three months in the hospital and three months in rehab, unable to stand the entire time.

Despite the process being “incredibly painful,” Oney said she was grateful it hadn’t happened to someone else.

“An elderly person would not have been able to recover. That was my mindset,” she said. “I was motivated to go and start my business. I was like, ‘Yeah, this totally shut me down … but I’m not gonna let this stop me. And when I can get on my feet again, I’m gonna freaking kill it.’”

Oney said when she returned to Columbus, she didn’t feel like she was killing it. She had no money, was using a walker, couldn’t work and couldn’t care for the lesson horses she owned — and she still had a lease on the farm. But she used the money she had from a previous horse sale to get by, and in August 2021, she moved to the farm she currently leases in Harris County.

The rise of her business

Oney said it took her two years to recover from the accident and she’s permanently 25% disabled, dealing with constant pain and complications. She said there were many times she wanted to give up, but an intense passion for the animals and for the sport brought her back every time.

“I have to have horses in my life to function,” said Oney, who found her way back into the saddle even before doctors cleared her to ride. “I was like, ‘I cannot go another week without getting on this horse.’ So I got on him and walked him around and it felt so weird. It was a joyful feeling but was also like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got a lot of work to do.’”

That passion propelled Oney through a tough first year during which she cleared the barn, taught lessons once a week and learned how to run a business.

As she became stronger, so did her business. After some restructuring and rebranding, Oney built an entire lesson program from scratch, and Double O Sport Horses began to gain traction. She said she now has about 40 once-per-week lessons and 15 lesson horses, riding academy programs for kids, a summer camp and a staff of four. Double O Sport Horses also offers horse shopping, boarding, training and consignment services.

“When I see all that I’ve built — the horses I have in my barn, the clients I have, what I have tangibly, emotionally and physically … I’m just blown away,” Oney said. “I allow myself to be because that’s what motivates me to continue. You have to romanticize your life.”

Oney’s mission

Oney said running Double O Sport Horses is an around-the-clock commitment. Between teaching lessons, driving horses to shows and maintaining the farm, she rarely gets any downtime — often working three to four weeks straight before taking a single day off.

But Oney said her passion and faith makes it all worth it.

“My mission with doing all this is not to make a ton of money. … It’s more of how can I make a difference in other people’s lives? How can I share God and what I’ve learned from him with other people?” she said. “The horses are just a vehicle that I can improve … the next generation.”

For all the chaos that comes with running a business, Oney’s farm remains peaceful. Its sprawling green pastures and quiet surroundings are part of why Oney loves what she does.

“It’s a very healing atmosphere,” she said. “You never know what people are going through … so just giving people an hour or multiple hours throughout the week to share something is so wonderful. It’s the best way that I’ve found to make a difference in other people’s lives.”

Training the next generation

Oney said she also wants to empower young people to chase their dreams. She remembers wanting to be a horse trainer as a kid but doubting she could ever do it. Her farm and approach to training aims to squash this doubt in other kids, she said.

One of Oney’s clients, 12-year-old Kyleigh Ward, started at Double O Sport Horses in February 2024 having never ridden before. Now she boards her own pony, Brody, at the farm, rides five days a week and is training to qualify for the United States Equestrian Federation Pony Finals.

Kyleigh told the Ledger-Enquirer she has loved her experience training at Double O Sport Horses. Oney’s training approach emphasizes overcoming mental blocks and becoming more confident in the ring.

“She’s amazing,” Kyleigh said of Oney. “Her teaching is really nice. She knows not to push you too much.”

Kyleigh’s mother, Erin Ward, said watching her daughter train with Oney and fall in love with the sport has been a parent’s dream.

“When you watch (Olivia) give a lesson to someone, you can tell she is doing whatever she can to make that rider and that horse be the best pair they can be,” she told the Ledger-Enquirer. “As a parent, what else do you want?”

Erin said it’s not just Oney’s horse knowledge and riding skills that make her a great teacher — it’s also her resilience.

“You don’t come back from an accident like that … and ride horses again just because you want something to do,” Erin Ward said. “You do it because you love it. That’s what I want for my own kids. You can’t ask for a better role model.”

One of Oney’s own role models early on was Holly Peace, owner of Peace Stables in Senoia. Peace knew Oney as a child and now works alongside the young trainer as a fellow professional in the horse business.

Peace said it’s her turn to be in awe of Oney.

“When I think about (Olivia), she’s somebody who’s been thrown so many curveballs that are life altering, and she catches them and makes them go her way,” Peace told the Ledger-Enquirer. “She rolls with the punches in a way where she’s not gonna be defeated. She’s gonna keep going and bounce back.”

Oney said she won’t be slowing down any time soon. She recently added Double O and Co. — a women’s riding group — to her list of services and hopes to one day have a second location for her business.

She said if there’s anything the past few years taught her, it’s this:

“You can literally do anything you put your mind to, even if you feel deep down that you can’t,” she said. “Life is life. You gotta pay your bills. If you have a dream or if you want to do something with your life … you just have to do it.”

This story was originally published July 18, 2025 at 6:00 AM.