Toshiyuki Tanaka

Despite only taking up eventing aged 22, this determined Japanese rider reached the London Olympics five years later and is now preparing for his home Games in Tokyo. Martha Terry meets him

- Martha Terry

COURAGE lies at the heart of Japanese culture, rooted in the samurais of several centuries ago. There’s a bit of the warrior spirit in most top-level eventers. And no better is that encapsulated than in the rider who uproots themselves from their home country, travels 6,000 miles west to a tiny Cotswold village where they don’t speak the language and dedicates their life to trying to win a medal. The courage that propels them along that lonely physical and mental journey must give them the fire to take on any Olympic cross-country track.

Toshiyuki Tanaka – “Toshi” – grew up in a non-horsey home in western Japan. His father runs a garden centre and neither of his two siblings were interested in riding. But Toshi remembers the moment he was entranced by showjumping as a 15-year-old.

“I was watching TV before I went to school, and an international jumping show was on air – that was my first knowledge of the sport,” Toshi tells me as we sip coffee in his trainer Angela Tucker’s tidy sitting room, her lurcher Mo camped between us on the sofa.

“I found a riding club where I could learn – Riding Club Crane. It might seem a late start but in Japan there are no ponies, so we all learn to ride on horses. They are very good horses – some of the top team horses come to be schoolmasters when they retire.”

A degree in business management was an obligatory step, but afterwards Toshi started working for Riding Club Crane – “riding was all I wanted to do”. His boss Kazuhiro Iwatani, veteran of three Olympic Games, advised his young charge to take up eventing aged 22.

“It was Kazu who found out my talent for eventing, if I have any,” he smiles modestly.