Life is full of ups and downs. It is not always a smooth journey and there are setbacks along the way. As an international grand prix dressage rider, Jacqueline Siu knows that well.

Some years ago, a horse that she trained from a young age and which had just started to get to a high level was diagnosed with cancer in his throat. He died not long after. The tragedy made Siu feel like losing a family member and she kept crying “until I couldn’t cry anymore”. Then when the elite rider was all set for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, she was hit by another heartbreaking incident. The horse she was ready to take to the games was injured and she could not take part in the all-important event that she had “put everything into”.

These were big blows to the young woman. Yet each time she managed to pull herself together, pick herself up and move on. All for her love of equestrian sports.

“Sometimes I'd get fed up when I have a real setback. But then bad things happen all the time to people. It’s actually part of life. You can sit around and go ‘poor me, I feel so bad for me’, but at the end of the day life goes on. You’ve got to realise bad things happen to other people, too. You either give up, or you say ‘no, I’m going to keep going’. Riding is my passion, and that’s what keeps me going,” Siu says.

This ability to bounce back, according to Siu, is one quality it takes to excel at equestrian sports, a “very challenging, physically and mentally demanding sport”. Yet the sport itself also lends strength to the rider. “Difficult times make you a lot stronger and reinforce your love for the sport. I think the sport has made me stronger. Setbacks are part and parcel of the sport that we deal with. You have to keep your positive outlook and try to be the best you can even when things are looking tough.”

Over the years, Siu’s inner strength has led to many achievements that made her proud. These include winning the Young Rider Championship title in her grand prix debut in 2006, making history in the same year by being the first Hong Kong dressage rider to take part in the 2006 Asian Games, and being placed fourth individually in the 2014 Asian Games. She also takes pride in having brought up various horses at a young age, many of which went on to compete at the international level.

More recently, Jacqueline has found success at major events. As the first and only Hong Kong representative in dressage at the 2017 National Games, she gave an impressive performance with her horse Jockey Club Fuerest on Tour and won a first-ever silver medal for the Hong Kong team. At the 2018 Asian Games, she claimed the gold medal in the individual dressage competition to give Hong Kong its first-ever equestrian gold and the Hong Kong Equestrian Team its best-ever showing at the Asian Games.

A rider who began her passion with horses at the tender age of five, Siu takes great pleasure in the intense excitement of riding in competitions. “Those are moments that make all the hard work worthwhile. You live for the moment in big competitions and championships. That’s what really gets your adrenalin going.”

Yet Siu feels competitions are not separate events that bear no relations to each other. They are a continual process in which she never stops improving. “Even if you feel you’re the best rider, you always strive to be better. You might be happy with your performance, but still you want to be better. That’s the very important outlook that it takes to be a top rider,” she says.

Having good mentors is just as important. Siu says she has been fortunate to have worked with some of the best trainers and riders in the world. One of them is Anky van Grunsven. For several years, Siu lived at the Dutch dressage champion’s stable in the Netherlands and trained with her. At the time, Siu was  progressing to the senior level from the under-21 level. She says seeing how van Grunsven “conducted herself as a role model” and her dedication to the sport had been most inspiring.

In professional equestrian sports, the level of dedication an athlete has to put into his sport finds no equal with many other jobs, especially as the sport involves two living beings.

Siu explains: “It’s not a nine-to-five job. It becomes your lifestyle. Working with horses means you have to be available for them all the time. The commitment is huge because you’re dealing with a living, breathing thing, not just a pair of trainers that you put in the cupboard when you finish training.”

Currently based in the UK, Siu is a member of the Hong Kong Equestrian Performance Plan (HKEPP) initiated and funded by the Club to help top athletes achieve international success. She feels obliged to promote to young people equestrian sports, which she says has taught her a lot in life, including patience and perseverance, and has taken her to places she never thought possible.

“The [HKEPP] is a really motivating programme in which we are able to work as a group and support and inspire each other. We are all taking it seriously and feel we have a responsibility to represent Hong Kong and to be role models for the next generation,” she says. “I do hope we can inspire people to take an interest in equestrian sports. I definitely think it’s a wonderful sport!”