Besotted trio united by their love of horses and a deep passion for showjumping
There may be the best part of 20 years between Jennifer Chang and Gaelle Tong, but they're very much aligned in their love of horses in general and a passion for showjumping in particular. Jennifer, 34, and Gaelle, 14, together with Gaelle's 15-year-old sister Magali, are three Hong Kong showjumping riders sponsored by the Hong Kong Jockey Club and each has this week become fuelled by the Olympic dream.
The Tong girls and Chang have an intriguing commonality. Their fathers are Chinese businessmen who met and married their mothers overseas - Jennifer's mother is American and she was born and raised Stateside, while Gaelle and Magali's mother, Veronique, is classically French.
Their backgrounds are amazingly similar - born elsewhere, riding ponies by the time they were three years old, moved to Hong Kong, discovered Beas River and are now besotted. Jennifer's father, David Chang Ping-Chung was originally from Shanghai, and made his living as a consultant who introduced major businesses to China, including Nike.
'I started riding competitively as a teenager and got completely hooked,' said Jennifer, who now works in business development for international property group Jones Lang LaSalle. 'I was actually out of it for 10 years while I studied, initially at Skidmore College and then graduated from Columbia University. I came to Hong Kong nearly five years ago and only after having been here for a couple of years did I hear about Beas River and decide to get back to riding competitively again. So I became a member of the Jockey Club and it all started to happen.'
Jennifer has represented Hong Kong in major competitions in Malaysia, Thailand and also Qatar, where she won the borrowed-horse competition. There is clearly a strong sense of competition between the trio.
The Jockey Club sponsorship enabled Magali and Gaelle to take their horses abroad and compete in the South-East Asian Young Riders World Cup League last August. And we use the word compete in its proper sense - Gaelle actually won the Cup for Hong Kong.
