Obviously on the show it’s orange and fiery. But in the Fiendship comic, where a lot of this is coming from, it’s sort of a purple-magenta for some reason (almost the exact color of Twilight’s magic, in fact). The only time you see orange out of him is when he tries draining magic from a unicorn.
Ultimately, I obviously went with the purple color. My explanation/headcanon/whatever is that purple is his base, unaugmented magic color, and the orange only comes in when he’s drained or is draining someone.
Unless the objective of this sport is about how well one can multi-task. I have a headcanon that Centaurs were originally a race of Giants and Ponies that ended up getting fused together into one body, over generations, the two merged minds of the original fusions gave way to a singular intelligence in the new generations.
These new Centaurs were highly gifted in Magic, higher than that of most Unicorns and could channel spells through their horns and their hands, and had developed archery as their peoples primary sport and way of fighting to emphasize the importance of their hands and arms.
Edited