From riding tongawala’s horse to Asian Games, how equestrian Ashish Limaye made the leap

When the equestrian Ashish Limaye competes at the forthcoming Asian Games in Hangzhou, it will be the culmination of a remarkable journey that started with him picking up the sport while riding horses owned by a tongawala (a driver of a horsedrawn cart). It is also a journey that was halted for a few years as he pursued engineering and resumed when he began training children to ride horses.
Limaye who hails from Pune but has been based in Europe for the past two years has qualified to compete for India in the equestrian discipline known as eventing which tests horses and riders over a combination of three events: dressage, cross country and show jumping. The Pune resident’s earliest memories of himself riding a horse was from when he was just 10 and his parents had taken him to a small place run by a tongawala where children would be allowed to ride horses during the summers. They used to have a summer camp of sorts near my house. And they would basically let kids ride horses in a circle at a small ground,” he recollects. Limaye has been rubbing his eyes in disbelief after qualifying for the Asian Games, considering he switched to eventing from show jumping barely one-and-a-half years ago. Eventing is where Fouaad Mirza had won a silver at the last edition of the Asian Games in Jakarta, becoming the first Indian equestrian to win an individual Asian Games medal since 1982. Unlike Mirza, who hails from a long line of horsemen, Limaye’s parents were doctors. That camp was enough for them to realise how much he loved riding horses. Soon, at the recommendation of a relative, they took him to Arjuna Awardee Col. JM Khan, who used to be a prominent equestrian coach in Pune.