Shaista and Mahira Furniturewala are among the country’s leading show-jumpers.Dissing the equestrian discipline of Dressage is a cliche now though prettied horses get tacked up dutifully every four years at the Olympics.
“Dressage is boring!” Mahira Furniturewala declares about the most-carped about Olympics staple from the stables, having opted for the more adventurous show-jumping herself.
At nine, the now 18-year-old lost out in her first junior Dressage competition, bawled in a corner, and made up her mind. “Judging can be partial in Dressage. It’s very subjective, and there can be politics in picking winners. I found it boring,” Mahira said of the preen-and-prance fest that many struggle to comprehend. Sister Shaista, four years older, reckoned that in show jumping, a win was for all to see.
As India’s leading show jumpers among women, the Furniturewala sisters now dip into Dressage only to shore up points. Mahira jumped 160 cm at the recent Open Nationals in Mumbai – where the tournament returned after two decades, hosted by the Amateur Riding Club. Astride Poker, Mahira, who is graduating from the Novices, finished third-overall and first amongst women. Sister Shaista has done 175 cm at the 6-bar, but the standard to beat is sailing over 185 cm – that’s still three pegs over what the sisters have managed.
“I never understood the concept of Dressage. I immediately liked the adrenaline rush of jumping and how clear-cut it was – you jump you win, you can’t you don’t win,” Mahira said after Poker gave her a Top-5 finish in her first Open national event.
She took to the sport at four, got her first horse at eight, and made it to the junior nationals at nine – without placing in Dressage, she chuckles. “I got bored of those movements and the tests and just circling. When I cried, dad said don’t be a ‘sore loser’. I just raised my standard! Show jumping’s my goal now.”
Shaista is aware of her privilege in a sport that prizes imported breeds. “But we did start on club horses and our parents always made us realise hard work needs to follow what they could give us,” she says of her family that owns a construction business in Bandra.
Mahira was India’s top junior among girls in 2015, ’16 and ’17, and finished seventh at an Asian youth meet in Hong Kong, after also competing in Iran as part of the Indian team. She was still doing 120 cm last year, and has shown progress to climb to 160 cm now. “I’ve had a 100 soft falls, but in the last few months I’ve regained my confidence and compatibility after a particular bad one. Had to start from scratch two years ago,” she recalls.
India last sent women riders to the Asian Games – Shruti Vora and Nadia Haridass in Dressage – but Mahira is keen on acing her event now. It looks like a trot for the Furniturewala sisters, but Shaista recalls her father facing some resistance when putting both his girls into riding. “Look, we are a Muslim family, and we might have grown up among horses and the money, but there would be mutterings from within the social circle – some relatives and friends – many of whom are proud of us now. It was the usual things – girls will get tanned, they might break their bones, they might get too attached to the sport which might be difficult to wean them away from once they get married. Maybe they won’t be permitted!” Shaista recalls with a huff.
It hurt that the two were being praised by strangers. “We’d compete, and army officers would come and tell us how we were doing well, and we’d feel ‘wow’. But dad had to hear stuff, and he’d say ‘they’re my daughters, they’ll do whatever they feel like.’ My mother would just direct all the cribbing to him, saying ‘it’s Sharif’s decision’. Both of us were so immersed in it, that he knew nothing could stop us,” she says.
They would even shift to Bangalore for four years to train at the same riding school as India’s Asiad medallist Fouad Mirza. “Riding runs in our family. Dadaji started but he’d go on trails, my dad also liked riding. So what else could we have loved?” Shaista says, adding that international medals for India is the target. The 185 cm is a longstanding mark in Indian show jumping dating back at least two decades. “It’ll be marvellous if a woman breaks it, right? The army riders are fantastic, but we want to take a shy at it too,” she says.
