During the National Day Holiday, the Duanjie Festival National Horse Racing Invitational — branded as "Guizhou Village Horse Race" — grandly opened at the Sandu Equestrian town in Sui Autonomous County, Guizhou Province. As the core event of the Sui people’s “Duanjie Festival,” the race leveraged the dual festive momentum of the Duanjie Festival and National Day to achieve breakthrough upgrades in scale, content, and influence. The event attracted huge crowds, with Sandu receiving over 607,900 visitors during the holiday.
Known as “the Hometown of Horse Racing in China”, Sandu has preserved its horse-racing tradition for nearly 400 years. This year’s edition not only continued highlights such as horse races, horsehair embroidery workshops, bronze-drum performances, Shui ethnic parades, and the thousand-person banquet, but also added new attractions like horseback archery contests and gourmet markets, allowing visitors to fully immerse themselves in the festive experience to enjoy the Duanjie Festival, the horse race and the intangible cultural heritage.
Among the new brand partnerships, War Horse energy drink stood out as the event’s exclusive beverage partner. In addition to providing sustained energy for staff, riders, and tourists, War Horse brought an innovative section with its “Drone Archery Can-Opening Challenge,” which became the highlight of the event and injected new vitality into the millennia-old horse-racing tradition.
On October 3, War Horse invited Huang Sibo, China’s first World Field Archery Champion, to attempt this first-of-its-kind challenge that combined horseback archery with dynamic drone targets. Unlike traditional fixed or slow-moving ground targets, the drones could change trajectory mid-air, making the challenge significantly harder. The contest consisted of four rounds, with drone target diameters shrinking from 40 cm to 30 cm to 20 cm, before culminating in an extreme final stage — hitting the 2-centimeter pull-tab on a Warhorse can to achieve the spectacular goal of opening the can by shooting only one arrow.
After successfully completing the challenge, Huang Sibo remarked:“War Horse not only provides vital energy when it matters most but also brings traditional horseback archery into the public eye through innovation. This challenge especially resonated with younger audiences, showcasing how ethnic sports can merge with technology to create something new.”
In recent years, Guizhou’s “village-branded” sports and cultural IPs — from Village BA and Village Super League to Village Horse Race— have flourished nationwide. Known for being down-to-earth, culturally rich, and highly interactive, these events have grown from local competitions into national cultural-tourism symbols, energizing county economies,embodying cultural confidence and disseminating local culture.This is a unique path for rural revitalization. As a national energy drink brand, War Horse has long supported cultural heritage and local innovation and integrated its core brand spirit of “innovation, challenge, and breakthrough” into the projects, bringing renewed life to age-old practices.The deep involvement in "Guizhou Village Horse race" marks another key step in the brand’s strategic journey. Meanwhile, its product features perfectly align with high-intensity sports scenarios, providing athletes with reliable energy support.
Looking ahead, with brands like War Horse continuing to deepen their engagement, the integration of intangible cultural heritage and tourism in China’s ethnic regions will only expand,and thus powering our cultural confidence.
