Hitting the half-century mark in March, elite rider Nicole Fardel-Pearson is finding it increasingly tough to divide her time between two continents: in Hong Kong where she lives in a lovely house in the suburbs with her husband, and the UK where she shares a house with a teammate and undergoes intensive training.

“As I get older, it’s become harder to leave home. In particular, now when the weather has been utterly glorious in Hong Kong. Soon I’ll be going back to minus six [degrees], with rain, wind and frozen pipes. It’s not particularly fun. But you do it. Something just keeps you going back for more. I wish I could explain it, but I can’t. I love this sport!” It is this passion that has driven Pearson to many successes on the competition arena. Over the past three decades, the Hong Kong-born athlete and trainer has been playing a leading role in the development of the city’s equestrian sports, from her beginnings aged around 11, through to representing her home at international multi-sport events, such as the Asian Games, in which she has participated four times already.

Pearson’s love of horses first sparked in the early 1970s when her father would take her to watch trackwork sessions at the Happy Valley racetrack. “Every Sunday morning it was like my treat,” says Pearson. “As a kid that is how you fall in love with horses.”

Pony rides followed and the young Fardel-Pearson’s penchant for the sports grew as “a natural progression”. “I developed a group of friends. We used to take the old train after school and go and ride,” she says.

“One day out of the blue, someone from the Horse Society Committee came up to me and said: ‘Would you be interested in representing Hong Kong?’ I didn’t know what they were on about. It turned out the Jockey Club had decided to send a team of horses to the Asian Games in Seoul in 1986, so five of us were selected for that.”Young and inexperienced, Fardel-Pearson had no expectations at the time she trained for the games. “But we managed to come fourth in the team event, which was more sort of luck than good planning, I think,” Fardel-Pearson recalls with a smile. “It was a terrific experience. Up until that point, I rode in Hong Kong just for fun.”

As Fardel-Pearson became more serious with the sport, her experience and achievements “snowballed”. When Hong Kong won bronze at the Asian Games in Incheon in 2014, she was right in the mix, rising to the occasion individually and helping guide her younger teammates.“It was one thing leading to another; one Asian game and then another. Before you know it, now I have done four,” she says.

Nicole made her debut alongside with her horse Jockey Club Weronique Show in the 2017 National Games as Hong Kong team competed in the Eventing discipline for the first time.

Pearson attributes her accomplishments to “being in the right place at the right time and being absolutely bloody-minded that it was going to happen”. Support from the people around her is important, too. Her “utterly supportive” husband of 20 years, she says, is the one who “makes it all possible”. Then there are her fellow team members, including Thomas Ho, whom she taught when he was eight and with whom she lives under the same roof in the UK whenever she is there to train. “We do rely on each other, and my trainers have been so supportive. It’s everyone really. It’s a village.”

Training and competition take up around 10 months of the year, and that includes the formal equestrian event season from March to October. The training and lifestyle needed to make it to the top have taught Pearson “eternal patience”. She emphasises that “you cannot lose your temper with a horse, it will get you nowhere”, adding that the sport has taught her perseverance and “to be stubborn in a good way”.

“You have to be prepared to work very, very hard, and you cannot do it half-heartedly. Things don’t always go the way you hope. It teaches you a huge amount of humility,” she says.At the end of the day, it is passion that keeps Pearson going. “I’ve had incredible adventures with this sport. I have been to amazing places, met extraordinary people, and sat on outstanding horses. It’s the buzz, the adrenaline. Even with my aching body and not seeing my husband for months and months on end, still when the adrenaline kicks in, I want to keep doing it.”