After a successful 2011 season in the UK, you may think China’s Alex Hua Tian is already qualified for London 2012. Far from it. He is now on a month long European quest to get the results he needs to qualify by March 1st.
Eventing Worldwide caught up with him in Spain, as he celebrates a successful start to the campaign.
Hot towels
His team’s first major hurdle was understanding the hugely complex qualification criteria. In 2008, Alex was the first Chinese event rider to take part in an Olympic Games, and the youngest, at just 18 years old. For Beijing, as a host nation athlete, he only needed to achieve the minimum qualification, although he did go on to achieve qualification in his own right. Even Alex admits he doesn’t fully understand the qualifications and laughingly tells us “You need to speak to my mother, she’s got spreadsheets lined up so we know what we need”.
Both horses and riders have to qualify. For individuals, Olympic qualification works on a point basis in each group. The top placed in each group qualifies, with the remaining thirteen places being made up of those highest placed in the FEI rankings overall but not top of their group. Alex is in the South East Asia and Oceania group, Group G. It looks as though Clayton Fredricks who is way out in the lead will take that qualifying spot.
That means Alex must get himself into the bracket of the top thirteen in the world, excluding those who have already qualified as top of their group, or as a team. Australians’ currently occupy ten of those top thirteen places. As the tables stand at the moment, he’ll need a minimum of 190 points to be in with a chance, and prior to last weekend he was on just 58 points.
Fürst blood
He is confident he can do it, a confidence underlined by winning the first target event, the Dos Hermanas CIC3* in Spain, last weekend. He won on Fürst Love, a horse which was only at BE100 level a year ago and has had an incredible rise to fame.
“Fred”, as he is known, was bred by Jacke Mathieson, who still owns him with Edwina Qu YE. Jacke contacted Alex in 2010 having seen him ride at Badminton, believing he was the type of empathetic rider who’d support the horse. Alex went to see Jacke and Fred, and the rest is history. Fred has gone from BE100 at the end of 2010 to a three star winner in less than a year. Says Alex, “He is amazing, and a rare concoction of pure talent and complete, total confidence in his own ability, sometimes verging on arrogance!”
Bring on the horses
Alex’s Olympic hopes are pinned on Fürst Love and ESB Irish Fiddle, and they are on the European tour with him, along with his 2008 World Cup qualifier Magenta. Once he has qualified as a rider, he will have to qualify his two horses separately, but has until 17th June to achieve that.
For a horse and rider combination to be qualified they must achieve a qualifying result at CCI4* level, or one result at CIC3* and one at CCI3*. Alex is heading down the 3* qualification route, and already has the result to count for both horses at CIC3* level. They will be aimed at either Saumur or Tattersalls to get the CCI3* qualifying result. A qualifying result at CCI3* means less than 75 penalties dressage, 20 penalties cross country with under 90 seconds of time faults, and 16 penalties show jumping.
One down, two to go
The campaign continues on the 18th February when he competes Fürst Love and Magenta in another CIC3* at the same venue in Spain. From there Team China move on to Montelibretti in Italy on the weekend of the 24th February, where Fürst Love and ESB Irish Fiddle will compete.
Qualification for 2012 has been further complicated by the fact that the FEI has moved it’s deadline from the 1st May to the 1st March which is why so many early season events have been scheduled. Alex says, “These competitions have literally sprung up from nowhere, basically so that people can gain qualifications for London 2012”.
Alex will stay with the team on the continent for the duration of the campaign – “I’d planned on flying home, but with the weather being so wintery and the arena being snow covered I’ve decided to stay out here”.
He added “We’re staying at the most wonderful hacienda and we are having a great time with all of the Dutch competitors. We’re very close to the event and we have our own bar, so I should think we’ll get by just fine!”
Stay tuned as we follow Alex and Team China around Europe in pursuit of their Olympic qualification.
Report: Paul White and Jo Carr. Images Jacke Mathieson
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