Training across borders: How Singapore’s horseback archers hone their skills

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I think about the thrill. The adrenaline you feel when you are riding the horse at full speed. And in that moment, nothing else matters. It’s just you, the horse and the target. That is a very beautiful feeling. In

horseback archery, we break into 2 sports, which is archery and riding. You need to let go of your hands because you need to hold the bow and you need to focus on your shooting. It's 2 sports combining. So

you need to be competent on both and then you combine that. You have to actually bond with your horse because what happens is that when you go in to the track, you and the horse are partners. I started

with traditional ground archery in Singapore, which is in Pasir Ris. Then after a year, I did the horse riding in Johor. So basically, we can do both individually in Singapore. But to combine it, horseback archery is a bit

difficult because we don’t have the facility. You need to find a suitable place, the nearest one is in Malaysia. So you can train both. Everything dials back to how much you train, how you train. The quality, the quantity

of your training. I have to sacrifice a lot to travel just to train horseback archery. So that's where, actually, for athletes like myself in Singapore that we don't have training, we have to be creative and smart when it

comes to our training. Horse riding is a dangerous sport. In my experience, I think in about 4 years, I fell from a horse twice. The first one I fell is when the horse tripped over, so I fell to

the front. The second one was during a horseback archery run. So the horse entered the track and then he suddenly stopped, so I fell forward also. It's part and parcel of it. And we will taste, what I like

to call, “taste the fall”. It is a risk that you can never fully mitigate. It is a risk we can we can only minimise. This year, the Normad Games is this sixth Normad Games. So we also participate in

ground archery and also horseback archery. This year, it was held in Kyrgyzstan. The previous year was Kazakhstan. The frequency of the competition, actually, I could say that there are more than 10 every year. It's because we have a

lot of countries that do it. The competitors, we have a lot in Southeast Asia itself. We have Indonesia, Thailand, we have Malaysia. And a lot of Asia's countries: Mongolia, Japan, Korea and also Europe. They are very strong in

this because of their accessibility. In order to compete with them, I think I need to put more hours into training. So I need to prepare maybe 6 months or 1 year before the competition. Since my wife inspired me

to do this sport, I hope when my kids grow up and she have time, and she has time, she can eventually join me. It's nice to have a partner to do the same activity together. I hope that to

get my whole family, including my daughters, to try this sport. You don't have much to think. You have to trust your instincts, your training and especially your horse. That is where everything clicks. You and the horse click. And

that's why I call the “flow state”.