"Every evening I asked my foreign teammates to teach me some English and it really worked well."

Beast friends

When in Europe, Liu gets up every day at 7am and spends 10 hours a day cleaning the stables and training the horses.

"I only get Sundays off and my favorite pastime is to take my 'fat little girl' out to the forest," she said.

Liu is referring to her new best friend, Piroschka, the 12-year-old mare she bought in Germany last July.

"She is very brave and smart and we have a lot in common. She really helps a lot during competitions."

But Liu had a scare recently when a lack of financial support threatened to tear the new friendship apart.

"The horse is very expensive. It was very hard for Xinjiang Sports Bureau to get all the money for its upkeep," she said.

"The owner should have driven me out of the stable for failing to pay the first installment in time."

Her team could only pay one third of the money and, according to the contract, the account should have been settled once an Olympic place had been secured.

"Though I feel relieved at having achieved my goal of qualifying for the Olympics, I really want to help my team with this financial problem," she said.

"But so far I have not been able to find any sponsors."

Liu will return to Europe to prepare for the Olympics before arriving in Hong Kong, the host city of the Olympic equestrian events, around July 25.