Horse’s high temperature forces Usman to withdraw from NSW qualifier

KARACHI: Pakistan’s premier equestrian Usman Khan on Friday withdrew from the Tokyo Olympics Qualifying round in Wallaby Hill, New South Wales, Australia, as his horse had high temperature.

It badly affected their score in the first step in dressage on the opening day of the three-day event which began in Robertson on Friday.

But despite this unfortunate incident he still has a chance to qualify for this summer’s Tokyo Olympics.

He will now have to achieve the MER in the next event in Sydney in the first week of May. If he qualifies there then he will go to the final event which will be hosted by Melbourne, also his hometown, in June.

“We have withdrawn from Robertson,” Usman told ‘The News’ from Robertson.

“The temperature of the horse was very high. When we went into dressage the horse started rearing. Because his temperature was quite high it caused a lot of reaction,” he said.

“The venue where dressage was being done was between the cross country fences. The horse normally gets excited when he sees the cross country fences. It sometimes is very difficult to do dressage between the cross country fences. These were a few factors which resulted in a score which was not a qualifying score on day-1,” Usman said.

“We could do on day-2 and day-3 but we decided against going to the next two stages and save the legs. Its basic reason was if on day-1 we could not get a qualifying score then on day-2 and day-3 it is of no benefit as overall it would not be a qualifying score,” he said.

“It is unfortunate. It is such a rare incident. It occurred only two or three times in my entire career and that too in early days,” Usman said.

“It is very unlikely that you don’t have a qualifying score on day-1, especially in dressage. It is very very rare and today it happened, not only with me but with many others also,” he said. “Every horse is different. We don’t have the luxury to hit and miss,” he pointed out.

“So far thanks God it has been okay. This was not something we expected because in showjumping if fences fall we can fix that and in cross country we can improve timing but in dressage we were not expecting the score to drop that low,” Usman said.

“We don’t have the luxury not to run the horse due to high temperature. In normal circumstances when a horse’s temperature shoots we don’t run it but we don’t have that luxury,” the equestrian lamented.

“The situation now has become very critical. The Olympians who were competing today had three to four horses each but I had one. It would have been ideal had we two to three horses,” the rider said.

“But I am not complaining. I must say we did not do well at the end of the day,” said Usman.

“Now we are going towards a location where we can recoup ourselves and think about the next step. Hopefully we will complete in Sydney in a short format. We must qualify in that event to go to the next event in Melbourne in June,” he said.

Usman had requested the government for money for purchase of a new horse following the death of his previous horse Azad Kashmir through which he had qualified for Olympics, but so far the state has not taken any practical step towards helping the Melbourne-based rider.