Equestrian: How Fouaad Mirza is riding towards Olympics despite his ‘gifted’ horse being injured

Feed, train, rest, repeat.

Apart from the high of a quality training session, the monotonous daily routine away from regular civilisation can take quite a while getting used to.

Which is precisely why 28-year-old Fouaad Mirza has made it a point since his university days to not spend more than two-three days at a time back in India with family and friends. He’s careful not to break what he calls “the rhythm”.

“I love coming to India and spending time with my family,” Mirza, India’s first and only civilian Equestrian Asian Games medallist, told Scroll.in over the phone from his base in Bergedorf, Ganderkesee in Germany. “The two-three days visit provides a good break to refresh the mind. But at the same time, it isn’t long enough for me to start missing my mom’s food and my friends when I have to head back.”

His day starts with preparing the horses at 6.30 am and goes on till late in the evening during which he feeds them three times, trains with four different horses and if time permits helps his trainer Sandra Auffarth with her other horses.

“If I don’t wake up to feed my horses they will go hungry. So when I go to competitions, I need to take favours from others to feed them. I am now looking for somebody to help me with the horses to ease some pressure on me,” said Mirza, who normally drives the horses for competitions himself, sometimes around 1,000 kilometers for a weekend competition.

Mirza’s father Hasneyn Mirza is a veterinarian who specialises in treating horses. He was attracted towards them as a child when he and his brother would accompany their father to races and learn to ride.

A product of the Embassy International Riding School, Mirza trained for a long time with Olympic bronze medallist Bettina Hoy in Warendorf, Germany, and created history for Indian sport last year when he won the Eventing team and individual silver at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta.

He was also honoured with the Arjuna Award last month, another first for any civilian Equestrian sportsperson.

A new team

But Mirza has had little time to celebrate the highs. He is in the midst of a hectic Tokyo Olympic qualification period, which became slightly more challenging after his Asian Games medal-winning horse Seigneur Medicott was injured and ruled out for the entire duration of the qualification period.

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This meant that Mirza had to start rebuilding from scratch with two new horses – Fernhill Facetime and Touchingwood – to seal an Olympic spot. Astride his horse Medicott, the 27-year-old had made it to the top-200 in the world rankings during the corresponding period last year but had to change his goals after the injury.

“Seigneur Medicott is very gifted. The other two I am working with to qualify for the Tokyo Games are also talented but we are not at the same level yet,” Mirza said, adding that the probability of injuries to a horse is always there and that is why they work with more than one at a given point.

Equestrian ranking system considers the rider and horse as a team. The Olympic qualification system depends on the overall ranking at the end of October this year to decide who makes the cut. The list of individual qualifiers will be sent to the respective national federations in January.

As things stand now, Mirza has a good chance of qualifying for the Tokyo Games from the South East Asia and Oceania zone. “The task has become fairly simple for me. Japan as hosts have qualified as a team. Even the Australian and New Zealand teams have qualified. For me to go through, I need to maintain my top spot in the rankings from Group G,” he said.

Mirza is currently the top-ranked rider with Fernhill Facetime in Olympic Qualifying Group G. He will have to maintain that spot to become the first Indian rider to compete in the quadrennial event since the 2000 Sydney Games where Imtiaz Anees was given a wildcard.

Then there is the problem with the Equestrian Federation of India, which almost did not send Mirza and the team to the 2018 Asian Games before a late intervention from one of their vice-presidents Jitu Virmani.

Mirza admits that the issues in the federation, from selection controversies to National Sports Code violations, haven’t helped the sportspersons but insists that since Olympic participation is qualification-based, he was only focussing on his performances in the ranking events.

“I have one event left with Facetime and two-three with Touchingwood to improve my ranking. I will play it by the ear and decide which events to participate in,” he added.