China Take a First Dressage Team Gold as 0.3% Separates the Individual Podium
China won Asian Games dressage team gold for the first time in the history of the Games on Friday, finishing on 208.148 ahead of the Republic of Korea, with hosts Japan taking bronze on 204.117.
India, the defending champions from 2022, finished fourth on 201.971, some 2.146 short of the podium. Their best individual performance came from Shruti Vora with Magnanimous on 68.059. At 55, Vora was the oldest Indian competitor at these Games.
Japan’s bronze came from a squad that was almost entirely new to the occasion, where only one member, Hayashi, had competed at an Asian Games before, with his three teammates all making their debut. Japan had won team gold on home soil in 1994 and again in Jakarta in 2018.
A New Format and the Argument Behind It
Nam Dongheon (KOR) and Leonidas competes dressage Individual Final Small Tour during of the 20th Asian Game Aichi-Nagoya 2026 at Equestrian Park in Tokyo on September 27, 2026. Image: ©Morgan Froment/EQuerry Co
The 2026 Games ran dressage in a mixed format for the first time, allowing Small Tour and Big Tour combinations to compete against one another for the same medals.
Korea’s Shiwoo Kim and Sir Hubert NRW were the only Grand Prix combination in Friday’s team competition, becoming the first to compete at an Asian Games under the new arrangement, and scored 62.935%.
That statistic contains the whole debate around accessibility and participation: A continental Games permitting Prix St Georges and Grand Prix horses to contest the same title is a significant regulatory decision, and it goes to a question every developing federation faces - whether to set the bar where the sport’s elite sits and accept thin fields, or set it where the available athletes are and accept the criticism that follows.
The FEI and the Olympic Council of Asia chose the second. The result was a fuller competition across more nations than a Grand Prix-only format would have produced, and a team gold decided by a margin of roughly four percentage points across three combinations. Whether it produced better sport is a question the officials who made the call will reasonably be asked over the coming months, particularly with other continental Games watching how the arrangement lands.
The Individual Final
Three days of competition came down to less than three tenths of a percentage point.
Dongheon Nam of Korea and Leonidas took gold on a new personal best of 75.190%. China’s Jiayi Yu and Jackpoint took silver on 75.050%, with Sarah Rao, also of China, and Geniaal third on 74.935%.
The gold was therefore decided by 0.14%, and the entire podium by 0.255%. The fifteen combinations contesting the final had qualified through two earlier rounds, with a maximum of two combinations per nation permitted to progress to the Freestyle.
A personal best produced under that kind of pressure, at a continental championship, against riders from a nation that had just won its first team gold, made Nam’s the performance of the week.
