Sri Lanka earned the individual Tokyo 2020 quota place in jumping following a successful appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

The decision by the International Equestrian Federation (FEI) to annul results from its events at Villeneuve-Loubet in France that concluded in January 2020 was successfully challenged by the Lankan Equestrian Association and Karlsson.

GoodSport had the good fortune of zoom chatting with Karlsson on her achievement, while walking down a busy German street in high traffic time. Her initial sentiments were aired in this manner. She said “I am so happy with the bumpy road and there is a long way to go; I am eagerly waiting to represent Sri Lanka at the Olympics.” 

At that point we asked her about her ordeal where she was in the competition at one moment and out of in the next. We wanted her to explain in her own words. She said “The Olympics is a very important event. Everyone is really fighting hard to gain a slot. I knew that I did not do anything wrong and at the same time everyone was trying to help me during my predicament. I think Hong Kong was pretty sure that they will have it (the show jumping event). At one point it looked like when I dropped a little in the ranking in November, but I gained points that I needed once again in December and they took a chance I guess to try to find a reason why I should not go as I had earned the points. Yet, it took a long time to get through the system and finally win this case, but I knew whole time that I was right and I would go through, but time was a little bit against me, but because of the postponement due to Corona things worked to my advantage.  In fact, it took more than a year and I am so relieved that it was done.”

GoodSport then turned to the President of the Sri Lankan Equestrian Association Suranjith Premadasa about his views on the matter. He said “As she told us about the issue and every sport has these loop holes – someone to get into a slot. But we fought the case in Lausanne and from this end I did whatever we could along with the NOC SL to do the paperwork. Because we knew that this was the only way that we come to the first place of the given sport, so the FEI had taken it back at one moment and now they have given it back.”

We asked her about what category that she intends taking part?  Mathilda said that she would be taking part in the show jumping discipline.

We then turned to Premadasa and asked about their partnership and how it works. He said “We were looking at suitable expatriates from several destinations and I knew that Mathilda would be suitable because of the primary reason being that she had the horses and the real ones.  I hope that association has worked well enough and now we are taking part at the Olympics.”

Talking about horses GoodSport asked Mathilda about what king of horse that she intends riding at the Olympics. She explained “In reality he is my second half.  He is a fine stallion and he is the best partner that you can have. I had him for all his life and he is very special. I do not think there would be many competitors at show jumping in Tokyo, people who have bred their horses and lived the full life except for us. We know each other so well. He has everything that an Olympic horse should have. He loves travel and scream out his name when he enters the arena. We understand each other very well.”

Then we asked a little about her horse breeding farm. Mathilda said “I am really blessed to have a partner and we do a lot of breeding and we get about two hundred foals a year and that is amazing. It is nice to see them grow and many of the horses I have been riding are—the father, the mother and sometimes even the grandmothers and it is special.”

Then Premadasa reiterated the importance of developing an equestrian arena in Sri Lanka and he is working on it with very little success.  According Premadasa it all depends on the Minister of Sports because they already have a plot allocated for equestrian in Diyagama, but the work is stalled in the project.  But they have about 1400 riders with basic training. If they have the arena they could request from the FEI – their governing body.

GoodSport asked Mathilda as what her advice to all budding athletes in Sri Lanka. She said “Main ingredient is to work hard, even when things look impossible. It does not matter from what background you come from you only have to keep trust on people that matters”.