Hong Kong rider Samantha Lam
© AFP Mike Clarke HONG KONG (AFP) - They had to discard some cliched notions of Chinese culture that did not quite fit the image China's communist leaders hoped to show the world and spend serious time traveling around the country studying its culture and history.
"We had a 19-hour plane ride from New York and we'd already decided when we got here that we needed a rickshaw," Stephens, from Florida, told AFP.
"We found a small rickshaw in a shop and were studying how to make one for a jump, but when we had our first meeting in Beijing we were told that was the 'old China' and it was not the way they wanted their country portrayed," he said.
What they wanted, said Palacios, "was art and creativity".
This meant images such as rickshaws, which might remind the world of the aching poverty China still suffers, were out, while more benign cultural motifs -- pandas, dragons and caligraphy, for instance -- got the go-ahead.
Each show jumping course has around a dozen jumps and as the competition progresses the jumps become more difficult.
The height increases to 1.6 metres for teams and 1.8 metres for individuals, the poles get lighter and the furrows that hold them more shallow.
Here in Shatin, riders have said the perspective of some of the jumps makes distance judgement difficult, and that tight, twisty turns make for an unrelenting 88-second round.
The 40 motifs used here encompass the panapoly of Chinese culture, reflecting the pre-revolutionary and imperial themes showcased at the August 8 opening ceremony in Beijing.
Germany's Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum
© AFP/File David HeckerPainted masks of Peking opera, bells, gongs and dancing boys with red fans, moon bridges, Tang dynasty horses and, of course, dragons and pandas are all featured.
The Forbidden City, home of Chinese emperors for centuries until the 1949 communist revolution, inspired a number of jumps: its massive red studded doors, white marble balustrading carved with stylised clouds, winged totem poles and delicate wooden bridges.
Each fence is used at least twice, with minor changes such as the colour of the poles or the topiary.
The topiary is an art in itself and garden designer Erika Fernandez, from Mexico, said her main challenge is matching the colour of the foliage to the fences.
"Some that are very bright, like the Chinese umbrellas, don't need colourful gardens, but the bridge allowed me to do a beautiful Chinese garden," she said, pointing to the artifical cherry blossoms around the red bridge.
The turf and shrubs are real, she said, but the flowers are artificial as nothing could be expected to flourish in Hong Kong's punishing summer heat.
For her it's a family affair -- her grandfather and father were competitive riders, her husband and brother work with Palacios and Stevens, and her mother works with her on the garden design.
Stephens, from Florida in the United States, and Palacios, a Venezuelan, are both former competitive riders and now design show jumping courses the world over.
But they donate their time to the Olympics, Palacios said.
"We believe in the Olympic movement, the riders come for the medals not for money and for us this is an honourary job," he said.
©AFP