Mathilda’s journey from Kandy to Tokyo

By Shehan Daniel

If the road to competing at an Olympics is paved with hard work and determination, it is also marked by moments of good fortune. For Mathilda Karlsson, the first instance of luck in that journey may have been when she was just a child. 

Given up for adoption at a very young age – so young that she recalls no memories of her formative months in Sri Lanka – Kandy-born Karlsson’s life trajectory took an extraordinary swing when she was moved to Sweden. 

While it will always remain a mystery if those moments of fortune – that together with her grit and resolve have now helped her fulfill her Olympic dream – would have eluded her had she remained in Sri Lanka, the nation of her adoptive parents opened her to a path that she likely would not have found here – horseback riding and the sport of Equestrianism. 

“I was lucky to grow up in a very loving family that gave me all the support a child could wish for. My family gave me the opportunity to develop into the person that I am today,” Karlsson has said of her childhood in Sweden. 

When she competes at Tokyo 2020, show-jumper Karlsson will be the first Sri Lankan to participate in an Equestrian competition at an Olympics, having also been the first to qualify from the country for this year’s games. 

By her own recounting she was not a born prodigy who fell in love with the sport the first time she straddled a horse, but was simply a young girl who turned a discipline, that she took up as a hobby and for social engagement, into a passion.

“My parents were not into horses at all but being involved in riding school is more of a social thing (in Sweden). I really learnt to love the horses and the sport and I took it to another level,” Karlsson told the Daily Mirror in 2018, when she returned to Sri Lanka and began the process of citizenship that would make her eligible to compete for the country of her birth. 

“When I was 18 I moved to Germany to ride with a professional rider, Rolf-Göran Bengtsson, who at that time was number one in the world. I was just going to stay one year and learn the language a bit and see something different and I enjoyed it a lot, so I stayed and I have been in Hamburg since and have my own stable,” Karlsson said at the time. 

She had visited Sri Lanka for the first time a year earlier, and having fallen in love with what she saw, she decided to pursue the opportunity to represent the country in international competition, despite previously having competed under the Swedish flag. 

Her goal, even back in 2018, was to qualify for the Olympics and to her credit she achieved it through direct qualification – even if the path was made easier by her switching allegiances and qualifying for one of two spots awarded to the Southeast Asia Oceania region riders. 

The rules of competition tie the points a show-jumper accumulates in a season to the horse they use. Karlsson displayed grit when her horse, Chopin VA, was diagnosed with lyme disease and she had the difficult decision of allowing her horse to recover for five months, jeopardizing her chances of qualifying for the Tokyo games.

Chopin VA returned to competition a month before the end of the qualification deadline, and Karlsson and her horse were able to collect the 250 points she required to meet Olympic qualification, finishing second in the South East Asia and Oceania ranking at the end of the qualification period in December 2020.

It was a spot that was nearly had taken away from her, when the International Federation for Equestrian Sports (FEI) cancelled the ranking points awarded at competitions in Villeneuve-Loubet, France which was held in that month, and saw Karlsson lose her spot. 

Feeling aggrieved and with no other events left to accrue enough points for Olympic qualification, she showed pure determination with the help of the Sri Lanka Equestrian Association (SLEI) taking her case to the Court of Arbitration for Sports in Switzerland, and successfully had her ranking points reinstated to reclaim second position the region ranking.

Her participation at the Tokyo Olympics will be a boone for a sport that has a small participation of athletes and a lack of facilities, according to the SLEI President Suranjith Premadasa. 

“Equestrian sports in Sri Lanka is not at a level to compete internationally, so Mathilda competing in the Olympics will lift the profile of the sport and bring attention to it. Already several corporate entities have shown interest in partnering to develop the sport,” Premadasa told the Daily Mirror. 

In Tokyo, Karlsson will not only stand to define the narrative of how Sri Lanka’s performances at the games are perceived, but also to inspire a whole new generation of riders and the future of a sport.