Indian dressage team win historic gold, first equestrian yellow metal in 41 year

Hangzhou: India's dressage team cantered to its first ever Asian Games gold and only second in this discipline in the history of the sport with the quartet of Sudipti Hajela, Divyakriti Singh, Vipul Hriday Chheda and Anush Agarwalla living up to expectations, here on Tuesday.

The Indian quartet was performing well in the selection trials as their scores either matched or were better than the Asian Games medal winners from the previous editions.

It was more about the colour of medal they would win and they grabbed the top place on the podium by aggregating 209.205 percentage points, leaving behind China (204.882 %) and Hong Kong (204.852%).

The last time the sport of equestrian contributed to India's Asian Games tally was in 1986 when the country won a dressage bronze. In the 1982 edition in New Delhi, the Indian team had grabbed three gold medals in Eventing and Tent Pegging competitions.

Raghubir Singh had won a gold in individual Eventing in 1982 and then added another yellow metal in Team Eventing alongside Ghulam Mohammed Khan, Bishal Singh and Milkha Singh.

Rupinder Singh Brar won the third gold medal in individual tent pegging. In dressage, the horse and rider are judged on how they perform a series of movements. Each movement is marked out of 10 (from 0 to 10).

Each rider gets an overall score and from there, a percentage is worked out. The rider with the highest percentage is the winner of his class. Top three scorers in a team are counted to determine the winner. (PTI)