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Shattered pelvis, existential crisis and butterflies all part of Lai’s Asian Games journey Hong Kong rider Jacqueline Lai once feared her first Games appearance would be her last, now she’s ready for a fifth and eyeing loftier goals When she shattered her pelvis in 2011, Jacqueline Lai Jing-man wondered if the music had stopped on her athletic career after one Asian Games experience just months earlier – 15 years on she is ready for her fifth. Part of the team jumping quartet that claimed Hong Kong’s first Games equestrian medal, it was soon after she won bronze in Guangzhou in 2010, that her mother, the former actress Ellen Ng Ha-ping, revealed she had spent more than HK$10 million (US$1.3 million) on helping Jacqueline and her sister, Jasmine Lai Zin-man, become “good riders”. At the time, Ng said she had also “moved from a big house of 3,000 sq ft overlooking Victoria Harbour to a small flat of 400 sq ft in Causeway Bay”. That all that sacrifice, effort and commitment could have been taken away following one horrible training fall in Denmark, where Lai based herself after leaving Chinese International School in 2009 to prepare for the following year’s Games, gave the now 35-year-old “an understanding of how much I loved what I did”. “It was pivotal for me, and it gave me a new sense of appreciation for being physically strong and able-bodied,” Lai said. “It enhances your understanding and empathy for people going through injury, and people with disabilities. “It was tough coming back, but luckily, I was young and I had good support.”