5′ Tall Equestrian With Hearing Impairment From a Young Age Achieves Jaw-Dropping Feat

Equestrian sports require staunch physical strength and mental endurance. The major prerequisites for horseback riding are well-built stature, proper eyesight, hearing prowess, and the ability to guide the horse toward the home line. However, Taiwanese equestrian Wu Ling-Kai proved otherwise.

Wu Ling-Kai is the Taiwan-based horseback rider with a stature of 5 feet and has had a hearing impairment from a young age. However, the young rider never let her physical attributes hinder her path toward an equestrian career and made it to the headlines several times. Not just that, she recently stunned the equestrian community through her commendable feat in one of the most elite competitions.

Equestrian with hearing impairment makes waves in the sporting world

As per the report of TaiwanPlus News,Wu Ling-Kai is the ninth-grader equestrian who recently won a nationwide competition, beating out other junior high school students in her category. Interestingly, the equestrian credited the major chunk of her success to her passion for horse riding. She stated, “It affected my confidence. Riding horses helped with that. It’s an outlet that gives me confidence”.

Nevertheless, when she was just 2, she got an hearing implant, which affected her sense of balance a lot. Therefore, her grandmother signed her up for the horseback riding in order to help her teach kilter balance. It turned out Ling-Kai found her solace in the equestrian ring, and ever since then she never turned back. Though she still faces difficulty in hearing loud noises, Ling-Kai never gave up her pursuits of becoming an excellent equestrian.

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Talking about her hearing impairment, the horseback rider conceded, “I have trouble hearing loud noises that might startle my horse. If it gets scared, I could get thrown off”. She continued, “If I could hear the loud noises then I can’t anticipate my horse’s reaction and adjust accordingly”. However, despite the challenges, she never gave up riding, instead she found new ways to communicate with her horse. Now, the ninth-grader can cover long distances without facing difficulty in coping with high-intensity sounds.

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Clearly, Wu Ling-Kai indeed is one stalwart equestrian, as she continues to defy odds and frame a multitude of accolades on her wall of fame.