“It’s like you’re on a dragon,” is how tent-pegger Ayesha Ahmed describes the feeling of charging at top speed on her stallion, lance in one hand and reins in the other, as she gallops towards the peg.

The 21-year-old Islamabad-based rider, who started riding at five, is currently the youngest captain of Pakistan’s national women’s tent-pegging team. “Nothing matches the adrenaline rush of those few seconds,” she tells Eos.

Ahmed has played badminton, netball and basketball, and taken up swimming, polo and squash, but says nothing compares to tent-pegging, which she took up at 17. “It demands impeccable hand-eye coordination and precise control of the lance and horse,” says Ahmed, who is also studying public policy.

Raja Zarar Sajjad, president of the Equestrian Federation of Pakistan (EFP) and a keen rider, says the 2024-25 livestock census puts Pakistan’s horse population at 552,000. Of the nearly 70,000 horses used in equestrian sports, he estimates almost half are used for tent-pegging, with some 15,000 riders.

In a sport long ruled by men, a growing number of Pakistani women are galloping into tent-pegging — lance in hand and, increasingly, a seat on the federation’s saddle

In a sport long ruled by men, a growing number of Pakistani women are galloping into tent-pegging — lance in hand and, increasingly, a seat on the federation’s saddle

“Some have three or four horses, or even more, just for this sport.” He estimates that the rest are used for polo and leisure riding.

FREEDOM IN THE SADDLE

Ahmed shares four horses with her father but has a soft spot for five-year-old Khan, an Anglo-Arab chestnut, for his feistiness. “I love his nakhras [antics]. He refuses to gallop or even canter for anyone else,” she........

© Dawn (Magazines)