Age really is just a number if you’re Hiroshi Hoketsu, the 74-year-old dressage competitor who is on his way to qualifying for the Rio Olympic Games this summer. Hoketsu will compete against 11 other Japanese hopefuls for one of four berths up for grabs at the dressage trials this spring. If he is to qualify for Rio 2016, it would be the Duke University graduate’s fourth Olympic Games in more than five decades. Hoketsu was the oldest athlete to compete at both Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012. His first Olympic bid took place way back in Tokyo, in 1964, where Hoketsu competed in show jumping. In 2012, he and his 15-year-old Hanoverian mare, Whisper, competed in individual dressage at the London Olympic Games at the still-spring-chickenish age of 71, scoring a 68.739% in the Grand Prix. Sadly, it would be their last competition together, as Whisper was euthanized a year later due to complications from pastern surgery. At London, Hoketsu told The Guardian that he would continue to compete just as long as he felt that he was continuing to improve. With his Olympic bid four years later, Hoketsu is nothing if not the embodiment of that age-old equestrian adage: you’re never too old to learn something new on a horse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrAKm40n4Xk
Age really is just a number if you’re Hiroshi Hoketsu, the 74-year-old dressage competitor who is on his way to qualifying for the Rio Olympic Games this summer. Hoketsu will compete against 11 other Japanese hopefuls for one of four berths up for grabs at the dressage trials this spring. If he is to qualify for Rio 2016, it would be the Duke University graduate’s fourth Olympic Games in more than five decades. Hoketsu was the oldest athlete to compete at both Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012. His first Olympic bid took place way back in Tokyo, in 1964, where Hoketsu competed in show jumping. In 2012, he and his 15-year-old Hanoverian mare, Whisper, competed in individual dressage at the London Olympic Games at the still-spring-chickenish age of 71, scoring a 68.739% in the Grand Prix. Sadly, it would be their last competition together, as Whisper was euthanized a year later due to complications from pastern surgery. At London, Hoketsu told The Guardian that he would continue to compete just as long as he felt that he was continuing to improve. With his Olympic bid four years later, Hoketsu is nothing if not the embodiment of that age-old equestrian adage: you’re never too old to learn something new on a horse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrAKm40n4Xk