Tokyo Olympics: China’s Alex Hua Tian inspires new generation of riders with mainland team set to make eventing history
- The 31-year-old was the youngest eventing rider ever during Beijing 2008 and now he is leading China’s first team to ever compete at the Games
- The eventing specialist, who finished eighth in Rio, is hoping to raise the profile of equestrian sports in China and attract more Chinese riders
As a teenaged Alex Hua Tian lay crumpled on the Fanling mud, his five-year-long Olympic fairy tale crushed in a matter of seconds, the Chinese equestrian pioneer had just one thing on his mind – the rules.
Did eventing’s new rules, enacted just weeks before, allow him to get back on his horse after one fall or was it game over? That single thought in his head was heavily weighed down by years of hope, sacrifice and toil, with the then 18-year-old having already made history as the first Chinese rider to compete in the Olympics eventing competition.
In his heart he feared the worst but, overcome by a fierce sense of denial, Hua Tian’s instinct was to quickly climb back on Chico and resume racing at the 2008 Beijing Olympics cross-country leg in Hong Kong. It was only when stewards informed him that his race was done did Hua Tian painfully accept reality.
But as he trudged back to the stables from the dreaded Fence 8, past cheering fans, a devastated Hua Tian was not to know that he was already embarking on a brand new journey as a trailblazer for equestrian sports in China – one that would take him to a rousing eighth place at the 2016 Rio Olympics and see him inspire the first generation of Chinese Olympic-class riders.
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Star rider paves way for China to make equestrian history at the Tokyo Olympics
Hua Tian returns to the Olympics in Tokyo – 13 years after making his bittersweet Games debut – but this time he has company. Apart from competing in the individual competition, the 31-year-old will lead three other riders as China fields an eventing team for the first time at an Olympic Games.
“The moment I fell off Chico, I thought I needed to get back on and keep going,” said Hua Tian, who later on burst into tears while speaking to the media. “That’s all I had in my head, and the fence judges and stewards were saying you can’t get back on and I was in total denial.
“And then came the realisation that I couldn’t get back on and after that, the debilitating disappointment. I remember that walk back from Fence 8 past all of the crowd who had been cheering for me, all the way back to the washdown area, the stabling area, and then it actually hit me.
“This wasn’t just my disappointment, it wasn’t just me who worked so hard to get there. And I think that was the hardest thing, was the realisation that so much blood, sweat and tears have gone into that moment from other people – my coaches, my parents, my supporters, my owners. It was very overwhelming at the time. It’s a testament to how wonderful our sport is, how great a community we have.”
Hua Tian will be joined in Tokyo by Guangdong’s Liang Ruiji – the national champion in showjumping and eventing – and Jiangsu duo Bao Yingfeng and Sun Huadong in the Chinese eventing team. The squad qualified for the Games in 2019 – despite facing competition from traditional powers Australia and New Zealand – helped by new rules that opened up Olympic places for more countries.
The 2014 Incheon Asian Games silver medallist and 2018 Jakarta bronze winner may be the figurehead of China’s rise as an eventing force in the region but even he underestimated the ambition within the Chinese Equestrian Association. In fact, he had advised the body to target Paris 2024 instead of Tokyo and, happily, they ignored him.
“I’m so excited and am quite proud that we can have an eventing team in Tokyo,” Hua Tin said. “I hope that what I’ve done in the past had something to do with it but there are so many other factors.
“My teammates deserve a huge amount of credit as do my federation, because when they floated the idea of supporting riders to go to Europe in 2017 and try to qualify for the Olympics, I thought they were crazy because at the time, with the competition, and considering our inexperience, to me it seemed unachievable.
“I advised them not to aim for Tokyo but still send riders to Europe to prepare for Paris 2024 and very luckily, the CEA totally ignored my advice and sent riders over to target Tokyo. Also, the FEI essentially opened up opportunities for nations like China to qualify teams for the Olympics and if it wasn’t for the brave decision made by the CEA, we would not have been in a position to qualify.”
Hua Tian hopes it is only the beginning for Chinese equestrian sports. Born in London to a mainland father and a horse-loving British mother, he started riding when he was around four years old. When the family was based in Beijing, his mother – who played a key role in the equestrian aspect of China’s winning bid for the 2008 Olympics – had horses at one of the capital’s leading stables.
Hua Tian spent his formative years in Hong Kong, riding regularly at Beas River where he struck up friendships with many of the city’s leading riders. At 11, they moved to England where Hua Tian attended on of the country’s most famous public schools, Eton.
It was during his early teens, when it became clear that Beijing was favourite to land the Olympics, that Hua Tian first harboured thoughts of representing China at his home Games. A generous businessman from Guangdong gave Hua Tian virtually a blank cheque to fund his campaign. Taking time off school, he was able to buy the horses he needed and travel around Europe competing in qualifying competitions.
The investment paid off as Hua Tian made history by becoming not only the first Chinese rider to qualify for the Olympics eventing competition but also the youngest.
He now wants to spread the equestrian gospel in China. In 2017, he helped launch the Horsemanship Movement “to introduce communities throughout China to the core values of equestrianism through a one-off programme for children from all backgrounds”. His “Hoof Print to Tokyo” campaign started in May is aimed at raising awareness of China’s Olympic efforts.
With his debonair demeanour, sharp looks and British public school background, Hua Tian is at once the quintessential equestrian pin-up boy for any development campaign while atypical to the communities in China he is targeting.
“Representing China and competing in my sport of equestrian eventing is very much a reflection of my background and upbringing,” said Hua Tian, who was set to study aerospace engineering at Bristol University before he decided to pursue riding full-time. “I went to a very famous school so I’m the first to understand that irony. But it doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t try to point out that you don’t need to have gone to Eton to ride a horse.
“I think it’s a global issue that the culture behind equestrian sports is very much associated with elitism. And I think in China it’s worse in that virtually all luxury brands in China use the image of a horse to promote their products and their branding.
“And because of the demographics in China, and the fact that the sport is still quite new, a lot of stables promote themselves and the sport in an elitist way. It’s not necessarily to keep people out, but to attract people. I think for many stables and businesses, the elitist image, certainly in the short term, is profitable and a successful way to attract new business.”
Hua Tian, though, understands the need to break through the sporting caste system that has placed equestrian at the top of the pyramid. To do that, he wants to emphasise the relationship between rider and horse that he feels makes his sport special.
“We have to be able to sell the sport, sell the culture in a different way,” he said. “You look at strong equestrian nations like the UK, France, Germany, the US, people from all backgrounds have horses and people from all backgrounds might not be able to afford to have their own horse but can at least have had enough experience with horses that they can appreciate what equestrianism means.
“The heart of equestrian sport is the partnership between horse and rider. And really for me, that is the core of what I’m trying to do in China, it’s to make sure that the sport and different stables, and the industry in a broader sense, find it easier to talk about the sport in those ways.
“Because without being pushed in that direction, I think it’s very easy for everybody to remain in this elitist bubble, which the sport doesn’t really need to be in and for the long-term future needs to find a way out of.”
He has a choice of three horses for his Games campaign – Don Geniro, his horse in Rio; PSH Convivial, with whom he won bronze at the Jakarta Asian Games; and Jilsonne Van Bareelhof.
“After the result in Rio, I realised how much I felt I had something to prove and it was wonderful,” Hua Tian said. “I was so proud of the horse, the team and everything we achieved. I was proud of myself. You know, it was eighth place, I hadn’t won a medal or anything like that, but for me, for my team, for Chinese equestrian sports, it was really a key milestone and something I felt I could very much build on.
“Obviously, the issue from there going forward, especially in a country like China where the sport is still growing, and there isn’t a critical mass of people who really understand the sport, it’s a matter of managing expectations.
“If anything, it’s linear growth but with equestrian sports, linear growth is never realistic. For me, I’m trying to keep my experience at Rio separate to my preparations for Tokyo.”
