Asian Games: Meet the four equestrians who fought the odds to claim dressage gold | Asian-games News

The Indian team comprising of Divyakriti Singh, Sudipti Hajela, Anush Agarwalla and Hriday Vipul Chheda created hory in Hangzhou on Tuesday as they won the country’s first ever equestrian dressage team event gold at the Asian Games.It also ended a 41-year-old wait for a gold medal in equestrian at the Asian Games for India.
Adversity steeled her
Divyakriti Singh, 23, Jaipur
Divyakriti Singh remembers going to a competitive Dressage show in Crozet, France and falling marginally short of qualifying for the Asian Games.
“Coming so close and not making it hit hard. I kept wondering that I had tried everything but why was nothing working out,” she recalls. “Looking back, I’m glad we were forced to compete in Europe amongst the world’s best riders and set a high standard. I’ve failed a lot and ended with bad results. But that struggle made me strong,” says India’s first-ever Asiad gold medall in Dressage.

Born to a wealthy family of Jaipur, surrounded polo players, attending the prestigious Mayo College girls school and Jesus & Mary college, Delhi through the sports quota, Divyakriti says the family still had to spend a lot to fuel her dream. For the introverted woman, it meant retreating further into her zone. “No social life, limited friend circle, always being away on birthdays. I haven’t been home for a long time. It’s taking care of horses all the time,” she says about life ever since she started in the sport in grade 7.
Divyakriti was in Denmark when the pandemic struck and two months stretched to many in lockdown. She settled into a lifestyle of seven days a week with her first horse Storm, and that meant no weekends, no days off.

“In Europe, everyone takes care of their horses and their grooming. I learnt that,” she recalls. “All around the world there was bad news then, people losing their lives. I was lucky despite being isolated and Storm pulled me through that phase. I wanted to get home as soon as possible, the visa was expiring. I dealt with my anxiety getting the horse ready everyday.”
Divyakriti rode her current horse Adrenaline for the first time in December 2022. “I was at the stables of this Danish owner, a superstar of dressage, still riding Storm. I was assigned the task of taking care of and feeding Adrenaline and was happy I was trusted with something so important.”

The partnership would start four days before the trials.
“He gave me great confidence, of riding in a big stadium. There were bad days when I wondered if it would ever get better. But we would start again the next morning – 6 am, cold winters, in snow,” she recalls.
The love for horses comes from her parents, and Divyakriti calls her father her biggest mentor. “My mother has stayed awake late into the night, lening to me crying when things were not working out. I owe her a lot. Everyone dreams of gold, but it was surreal when it happened.”
Growing up to gold
Anush Agarwalla, 23, Kolkata
Anush Agarwalla has always been hard on himself. He remembers a happy childhood going to La Martiniere school, Kolkata, like his father, uncle and cousins and starting to ride horses at Tollygunge. But he was always ultra-competitive and terrible at accepting defeats. Even after a gold medal at Hangzhou, he would nitpick on his own makes till he finally relented and allowed the joy and relief to sweep over him.
“It’s part of who I am, being so critical myself,” says the horse- obsessive, who travelled to Delhi every school weekend from age 11 to 16 to get better at Eventing. “Thankfully, my family understood my dream,” he says. And had deep pockets to support an expensive passion, all of which bore results when he ensured India’s gold.
But Anush remembers the dark days. Initially no one in Europe wanted to train him, he says. “Because of my bad level.”
Then when he told his coach in 2017 he wanted to make the Asiad team in 2018, the German coach showered some realism on him. “He said ‘Anush, you are crazy. Look at yourself, how bad you are.’ He was just being honest.”

When he couldn’t qualify eventually, Anush says he plunged into depression. “Accepting defeat is difficult for me. I was depressed for months and couldn’t sleep at night,” he recalls. After he made the transition to Grand Prix level in Europe, and couldn’t make the Tokyo Olympics grade till December 31, 2019, things got worse.
“ October after my 4th qualifier, I realised I’m just not good enough. I stayed at home, didn’t go out, was not social. Whenever I was riding, I wasn’t enjoying it. I took that failure personally and was embarrassed,” he adds.
His friends and family had to drag him out of the dark phase. “That’s my personality. And it’s the same drive that brought me the gold today,” he says, finally happy.
Moving to Europe to improve his riding also meant becoming independent, a tough task for someone used to a sheltered life. “I had barely entered the kitchen till I was forced to learn cooking and cleaning in Germany. The first year was difficult, I didn’t know the language. I had no friends I was alone and had to cook without the help of any staff.”

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📹 | Here’s the moment when India’s Equestrian Dressage team created hory clinching a🥇after a long wait of 41 years 🥹🏇#SonySportsNetwork #Cheer4India #Hangzhou2022 #IssBaar100Paar #Equestrian | @Media_SAI pic.twitter.com/MjvO5bAYq2
— Sony Sports Network (@SonySportsNetwk) September 26, 2023
There was a lot of learning to do in the stables too. “Cleaning boxes, saddling, paddock work, taking horses grazing. From doing nothing in Kolkata, I was doing a lot,” he recalls.
The partnership with Ethro is relatively new, since February. “All the work helped me build a great bond with my horse.”
Lening to the horse
Hriday Vipul Chheda, 25, Mumbai
Hriday Chheda, astride Chemxpro Emerald, was in the 10-minute ring — a holding area where rider and steed await their turn to perform — on Tuesday when he heard murmurs that the competition could be halted since the mercury had risen on a scorching day in Hangzhou.
According to equestrian regulations, events cannot continue if the temperature rises above 33 degrees. A one-hour hold in the competition seemed imminent.
But as bad as competing in the overpowering heat could have been, competing after the one-hour break would have been catastrophic for Chheda, Chemxpro Emerald and India’s gold medal chances. That’s because unlike the average high-performance athlete, a horse cannot be commanded through its exhaustive warm-up routine multiple times a day.
“We had already done our warm-up routine for 30 minutes. We requested the technical delegates that they should be fair to the horse and allow us to go into the competition arena. We didn’t want to go through that half-hour warm-up again after an hour. So they let me compete, and after me they took an hour-long break,” says Chheda, who comes from Mumbai’s posh Juhu area, over phone.
While the officials were convinced, Chheda had some more coaxing to do: this time, for his gelding.

While the duo was about to enter the competition area, a bout of nerves gripped Chemxpro Emerald.
“My horse got really stressed with the atmosphere in the arena. There were so many people! This atmosphere is not something you can get everyday. So you cannot train for it. He was really spooked and afraid to enter the arena. I had to really push him to give him the confidence,” says the 25-year-old.
In those nervy moments, Chheda worked on regaining his steed’s trust, based on his experience of riding horses since the age of six.
“Whenever he would stop and res going in one direction, I would turn him around and go the other way. We did this twice and then three times, and finally I earned his trust again. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have won this medal today,” adds Chheda.
Away from home, alone
Sudipti Hajela, 21, Indore
Sudipti Hajela struggles to recollect how long it has been since she last went home.
“It’s been a very long while, you can just say that. For the last two years at least I have been living abroad, specifically in France, to train for the Asian Games. It’s been a long journey,” Hajela tells The Indian Express from Hangzhou after she became part of the hory-making Indian dressage team.
Based in the French commune of Pamfou since last year, Hajela trains at Pamfou Dressage, an equestrian centre founded in 1978 that focuses solely on the discipline of dressage. Hajela has been living there just so she could train under Camillee Judet Cheret, who also trains the French Olympics team.

Since elite competitions take place frequently in Europe, it makes sense for a budding Indian rider hungry for competitive exposure to be based there since it saves money on frequent air travel, especially when one has to frequently transport the steed too.
The youngest of the Indian dressage team says that training in France has a different feel to doing so in India. For one, she has to be more hands-on in taking care of the horses in the stables there, which is something she didn’t need to do too much of when in India.
“There everything has to be done us. It’s an all-day job. At first, it was a little weird for me because I didn’t have the habit of taking care of the horse. But gradually, it all worked out,” says the 21-year-old.
Hajela hasn’t trained with her horse Chinski for a long time, but that didn’t matter on Tuesday at the Tonglu Equestrian Centre.Most Read
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“I think he has the right kind of energy needed for dressage. He’s really cool-headed in high-pressure situations. I can trust him and he can trust me,” she says.

Hajela’s journey to the podium started as a summer hob when she was just six.
“It just started as a hob for me. I never imagined it would end up being a gold at the Asian Games.”