Transcript:

[0:04]

[Music] Over these past few weeks, we've talked a lot about different famous horses. The one thing missing is you — the rider, that part of the story. And to start this podcast off, I want to tell a story of a rider who busted through a massive barrier.

[0:22]

She was born the 22nd of November in 1928. When she was just a little girl, she suffered from diphtheria when she was only 5 years old. Thankfully, she recovered, but she had to learn how to walk again. Her early life was harrowing and difficult. World War II had impacted her family. She had moved, and then her father died during the war, and then in her early 20s, her mother also passed away.

[1:01]

This woman faced hardship and challenge throughout her life, but the one thing that kept her going was her love for animals — and specifically, her love for horses. The one discipline that really pulled her in was show jumping. And as you're going to learn in this podcast, show jumping for anybody outside the military — especially women — was not a sport. It was not a celebrated sport.

[1:31]

But after the Second World War, cavalry was no longer needed. We had cars and tanks and all these horrific weapons. But it opened up competition to civilians, and in 1951, the Olympic Committee finally allowed women to compete in equestrian sport. This particular rider didn't get to compete in the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games because it was just dressage — that was it. It was not until 1956, in those Olympic Games, that she was able to compete in show jumping. She won a bronze medal in team jumping for England.

[2:25]

She was one of the first superstars in show jumping — where, in an era of television, show jumping was one of these sports that was able to be broadcast, that got a quick following around the world. By the time she was 30, she had already published 11 books. One was an autobiography titled Jump for Joy and then Jumping Life’s Fences — both were immediate successes. She’s gone on to write many more books, and in her show jumping career she won Grand Prix events all around the world — in the US, Denmark, Belgium, Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Australia, South Africa, and South America. She was winning Grand Prix after Grand Prix after Grand Prix.

[3:20]

After a long, celebrated career, she finally rested her eyes for the final time on the 27th of February, 1996. Pat Smythe has done more to put the sport of show jumping on the map than anybody else in its history.

[3:43]

Secretariat being led — he is the horse, and the horse is the best thing in the world, isn’t it? I’ve always loved them, really, since I was a little girl. Everybody’s in line — and they’re off! Secretariat away very well, has good position…

[4:01]

The love — I never thought owning a horse could mean so much to me… Secretariat not taking the lead — the madness! What kind of a horse is that? I’ve never seen a horse like that before… Lightning — now he is moving like a tremendous machine! Their story — Mustangs are more involved in the early development of this breed than I thought they were… Secretariat has opened the 22-length lead… He is going to be the Triple Crown winner!

[4:35]

[Music] Welcome to “In the Mind About Horses.” Hi, I’m Dr. Chris Mortensen. I’ve been an equine scientist and researcher for over 20 years, and in this week’s podcast we’re going to jump into the history of equestrian sport — and really where we are with it today. I opened up with an incredible rider who broke barriers — by far — jumping over barriers, as she put in her book Jumping Life’s Fences. Pat Smythe was in an era when show jumping — and I’m going to get a little bit into the history of show jumping today — but in an era where it was such a male-dominated sport. And it still is in parts of the world. It is still a military-driven sport in some societies, and it’s really challenging for some women to break in.

[5:31]

But the reason I really wanted to open with her today is because it’s bringing it back to you — the rider. And I know show jumping is incredibly popular. I know many listeners of this podcast are women who show jump. I just want to let you know I have so much admiration for the sport and what you do. I’ve jumped some cross fences — everybody knows that — and I’ve done a few jumps, but it just gives me appreciation for how athletic you are and how athletic your horses are.

[6:00]

In today’s podcast, we’re going to jump into when show jumping really began and among some of the other more popular sports. I also want to recognize the four women that were able to compete in dressage in the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games — that was Lis Hartel, whose story is just as amazing as Pat Smythe’s. Her story is going to be coming up in a podcast — I definitely want to talk about her — and she represented Denmark. Then also Ida von Nagel representing Germany, Elsa Christophersen from Norway, and Marjorie Haines from the US — all women that were able to compete in the Olympic Games for the first time in equestrian sports.

[6:47]

And a major reason I opened with this is because — can you think of any other sport where both men and women compete on a completely even playing field? I know in just the last podcast we talked about gender impacts on equestrian sport — and that’s talking about the horses — but looking at the history of equestrian sport, and paper after paper, study after study, they all say the same thing: this is the only sport where men and women compete on an even playing field.

[7:19]

And I think that’s what makes it exciting. And it not only makes it exciting with, say, gender — but age. Again, we talked about that in the last podcast, about horses. Age has an impact — ageism is not a thing in equestrian sports. Women in their 70s have competed at the Olympics. So it shows you equestrian sport really can even the playing field. You are an incredible athlete riding horses — you’re using different muscles.

[7:57]

In one of the earlier podcasts, I talked about how therapeutic riding has become so big in the last decade-plus, and it’s something we need more of because it does train you in different ways. And we have athletes like Lis Hartel, who was paralyzed from the knees down, but she still was competing at the Olympics in dressage. She didn’t have the use of her feet — talk about an incredible rider — but using other parts of her body to communicate to the horse. So it is so inclusive for all cultures, all genders, all ages.

[8:35]

But like I said, there are some barriers in certain segments of society, in certain countries of the world, that — those barriers need to come down, where women and men are equal in the sport. But in a lot of countries, in a lot of Olympics and big competitions, it is — and that’s what makes it such a great, great sport to be in.

[8:53]

Looking into the history of equestrian sport — this was a fun deep dive into the literature, looking at what research has shown, but also just understanding all these different sports and how we got there. And when we talk about domestication happening 5,500 years ago, I have no doubt in my mind there were young Homo sapiens — humans — out on the plains of Asia going, “Let’s race!” Whether it was boys, girls, teenagers, adults — it doesn’t matter. But you know in your head somebody, somewhere challenged another for a race, and they were racing down the plains to see which horse was fastest, or which one was a better rider. We don’t know — we don’t have any written evidence of that — but you know there was that kind of friendly competition going on.

[10:05]

When we get into organized equestrian sport, you’ll be surprised — thousands of years ago, that was a thing.

[10:20]

Now we’ve got to go back 6,000 years ago plus, with the invention of the wheel. And the reason I’m talking about the invention of the wheel is twofold — one is chariot racing, because that was one of the earliest equestrian sports, but second was talking about why horses matter as much as they do. It is because the wheel did impact humanity. It is one of those things — I mean, I still… okay, as I’ve thought about that podcast in the last few weeks, I thought, “Okay, maybe fire does edge horses out.” You know, cooking meals, cooking our food — that definitely probably helped us live a lot longer than the young age that we used to die at as Homo sapiens. But again, horses have had a much bigger impact on culture and society since they were domesticated than any other animal.

[11:11]

But the wheel was initially used for pottery, if you can believe that. It wasn’t like, “Oh, let’s go and drive a cart.” It was pottery wheels — because that’s how you stored food, that’s how you drank, that’s how you ate. So that was where it came in. And then the early carts pulled by oxen, humans, and then horses — you had this big, thick wooden wheel, right? It just… it was heavy, so you probably couldn’t go very far. It was just these two big discs. But the wheel had a big impact — you know, again, transportation, horses being able to pull carts, pull chariots, pull people.

[12:02]

What is really fascinating, too, is when our ancestors thousands of years ago created a better wheel — and that was the spoked wheel. And that happened about 4,000 years ago. These peoples of Central Asia, where horses were domesticated, were the originators of the chariots. That leaked down into India, then went into Southwest Asia — or what some people call the Middle East — down into Africa, Egypt, and then parts of Europe.

[12:39]

Now, if you don’t know what a chariot is — so, you have those two spoked wheels, then you have a platform with the wheels on an axle, and then you’re going to have a draft pole with a yoke. And it depends on how big your team is — generally, chariots were pulled by two horses, and in the yokes you had a horse on each side of it so they could pull the chariot. And the chariot was massive in warfare. It’s a sad part of our history, but if you had chariots in your military, you were going to be more successful on the battlefield. And that’s why we see this expansion of cultures, language, horses — and again, this all started in around Kazakhstan, modern-day Ukraine, and Russia.

[13:26]

But then you see chariots down in Mesopotamia. The Egyptians — we see a lot of it in hieroglyphics from thousands of years ago, where chariots were a big part of their culture. That brings me to: when did equestrian sport start in some sort of organized fashion? I guarantee you there were chariot races before there was an official chariot race. There were horse races before official horse races — maybe cart races, pulling… who knows? There was this going on until it became more organized.

[14:10]

The earliest recorded instance of horse races or horses in equestrian sport goes back 4,500 years ago, and this is the ancient Sumer civilization in Mesopotamia, where the Sumerians — who were critical to early civilization, they were so critical to us — the breadbasket of humanity and agriculture, all of those things. But they did have some inscriptions that show chariot races during religious festivals. Then, 3,600 years ago is when we see chariots appearing in ancient Egypt, and they too were using chariot races during religious festivals or other important events.

[15:00]

So that’s really the first equestrian sport that we have in any sort of recorded human history — was chariot racing. It wasn’t horseback riding, or endurance racing, or, you know, Thoroughbreds, or the Quarter Horse quarter-of-a-mile racing. It was chariot racing — that was it. That was the big thing. And I guess it shows opulence — you had chariots probably designed with beautiful artwork, the horses… you think of those Oriental-type horses — not necessarily Arabians, maybe Arabians, maybe Akhal-Tekes, whatever it was back then. It was just this big, “Hey, I’m rich — I’m a rich king or queen or civilization. Look at my chariots, and we’re going to have some races and have this spectacle.”

[15:49]

Things in recorded human history don’t change until the first Olympics. Now, pretty much anybody listening to this should know the Olympic Games, right? We have the modern Olympic Games, but if we go back to the ancient Olympic Games in Olympia, Greece, 776 BC — so we’re looking at 2,700–2,800 years ago roughly — just about then we had the first Olympic Games in Greece. And these were the Greeks — the equestrian events were really important to the Olympic Games.

[16:26]

And they competed in what we know as hippodromes. I’m going to talk about this one in a minute, but the most famous one that I know of is in Rome — the Circus Maximus, we’ll talk about that in a second. They had chariot racing — so you had two-horse or even four-horse — so tethrippon, or in Romans, you… Romans called it the bige, or the three-horse race was the triga. So they had two horses, three horses, four horses racing in these hippodromes.

[16:59]

And then they also had individual horse racing, called keles. And the horse racing — this was the first time we have instances of a human on the back of a horse in pottery, ancient Greek pottery. They’re bareback, they just have a bridle — so you can imagine incredible riders to be able to race bareback like that. And generally, these initial races were just with older, mature horses. Then they introduced races just for mares a few hundred years later — so that’s about 2,500 years ago — and then they had races for foals, which was about 2,300 years ago. So must have been small riders or something.

[17:46]

But the keles was a single-horse race with only one lap around the hippodrome, and it was a distance of over 3,600 feet — or that’s over 1 kilometer, or 5 furlongs in what we discuss in Thoroughbred racing. So those were the first equestrian events outside of chariot racing in some sort of organized fashion. But it really wasn’t like an international thing, right? It was to the Greek city-states.

[18:16]

Now, if we expand that a little bit further with ancient Rome — the Romans have impacted all of our lives with their conquests across North Africa, parts of Southwest Asia, and then into Europe — you know, and then invading England and the United Kingdom, and Germany, and all these modern countries, France — that the Romans showed up in. They were really into organized sport. So, the movie Gladiator is one of those that I think some people might have seen, but there are some famous scenes in there with chariots. So they come in with chariots with two horses…

[19:00]

Really, the one that — if you really want to see a chariot race, and this is dating myself — I wasn’t born in 1959, but I’ve watched this movie a few times, and that’s the movie Ben-Hur with the late Charlton Heston. And they did a remake in 2016, so some of you may have seen that. You could watch that chariot race and just be… wow, because the stunt men and women that were doing that — it’s pretty incredible when they show those in modern film. Very dangerous, but controlling the four horses in the hippodrome was just incredible.

[19:40]

And they were in this — so the Circus Maximus in Rome could hold up to 150,000 people. And this was your event, because they didn’t have cell phones or anything close to that. They didn’t even have books — you know, they had tablets and scrolls and things like that. Their entertainment were these games, and so everybody would fight over tickets or try to get tickets and go and see these spectacles.

[20:07]

For the quadriga races — these were the four-horse races in the Circus Maximus — they would do seven laps. Each lap was approximately 1,480 meters, or 4,856 feet — so close to a mile long. The total distance for the race was over 10,000 meters, or over 33,000 feet — so that’s like five to six miles, or 10 kilometers. That’s a long, long race. And the movie Ben-Hur does it justice, I think, even though that film came out 60-something years ago.

[20:45]

Interestingly enough, too, reading the history of this, the riders and even the horses were super famous back then, just like our riders today. So we know Pat Smythe, we celebrate her today — the charioteers and the horse riders back then were really, really famous.

[21:02]

What is also interesting about this is when you look at skeletal remains of the horses that were competing 2,000 years ago — 2,300 years ago — in these spectacles, they estimate they were kind of stocky builds, and they only stood approximately 53 to 61 inches tall. That’s 135 to 155 cm tall — so 13.1 to 15.1 hands. So, around pony size, a little bit bigger. They weren’t as gigantic as some of our 17-hand Thoroughbreds, nowhere close to an 18- or 19-hand draft horse. So these were the type of Oriental-type horses or southern Europe-type horses — Spanish horses probably being imported into Rome or captured during warfare, things like that. So those are the type of horses they were racing on.

[22:01]

When we go to the Dark Ages — they call them the Dark Ages because some people say it’s the dark age of history, where we don’t have a lot of written-down history — it was the fall of the Roman Empire in Europe, so that had impacts. Europeans had not expanded across, obviously, the Atlantic into the Americas. You still had a thriving Asian culture in China and Japan, and in India — those parts of the world — but again, it’s a point in history where we kind of lose touch with what was going on until we come around 1000 AD.

[22:32]

So about a thousand years ago, horse racing continues to be popular. Now, chariot racing drops off at some point in history — and I couldn’t find any data on that — but horse racing continues through the next thousand years to be big. Where it got super big — superstar status, where we talk about a Secretariat, a Zenyatta, some of these other super horses — was the foundation of the Jockey Club in the late 1700s in England. That started to establish rules and regulations for Thoroughbred racing. This also impacted the quality of Thoroughbreds that were being bred and selected for their stamina, their speed, their ability not to get injured — all the things that make a modern Thoroughbred a Thoroughbred. That all started 230, 240, 250 years ago.

[23:34]

This is also a time when you start to see some of the classic, classical horse races that are still run today. They had the Epsom Derby — that started in 1780. They had the St. Leger Stakes — that was started even earlier, in 1776. So then, as the British Empire expands around the world — obviously into the Americas, Canada and the United States — that culture gets exported down to Australia, down here to New Zealand. Thoroughbred racing actually is very popular around the world today, where you have races in Japan, Australia, here in New Zealand, other parts of Asia, obviously in Europe, and obviously in the Americas.

[24:27]

So, since then, the last 200 years has really seen a massive increase in racing. Now, some of the most popular horse races today — the Kentucky Derby was first run on May 17, 1875, at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky. Beautiful place — please go visit Kentucky, it’s just… oh, some of the horse farms out there are just jaw-droppingly gorgeous. And this was the first leg in the Triple Crown. Now, the Triple Crown of racing — which includes the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, the Belmont Stakes — doesn’t become officially recognized until the 1950s. But in the 1930s they started saying, “Okay, this is the Triple Crown of racing.”

[25:05]

Still very popular today, still ongoing. A lot of equestrian enthusiasts go to the races or are involved in horse racing. Standardbred racing, or harness racing, is just as popular in parts of the world — here in New Zealand, in Australia, and again in the United States. That’s like the modern chariot racing, but instead of pulling a chariot, they’re pulling a sulky — it’s a wheeled cart. And the National Association of Trotting Horse Breeders formed in 1871, and they’re the ones that have really pushed Standardbred racing and its popularity around the world.

[25:49]

Now, that just covers Thoroughbred racing. Quarter Horse racing — that’s still popular today in parts of the United States. The American Quarter Horse Association was not founded until 1940, so there was some Quarter Horse racing going on, but it doesn’t become official until later in the 1900s. But you also have Arabians racing, Appaloosas racing, Paint Horses racing — you even have mule racing. I was not aware of that until Idaho Gem, who was the first equid clone ever born. Gordon Woods and other researchers out of the University of Idaho — and I was able to meet with him, have dinner with him and some of his graduate students when I was a graduate student back in the day — learning about that fascinating story, which I’ll tell one day on the podcast. But I didn’t know mules were racing — but Idaho Gem came from a lineage of champion mule racers. So, very popular sport today.

[26:50]

This also goes to endurance racing. And I briefly mentioned this — that I had a friend do the Mongol Derby, which is 1,000 kilometers through the Mongolian Steppe. And it is one of the hardest races, if not the hardest race, in the world. Listening to her story — like, I can’t believe she did it, and she finished it. Heck of an accomplishment.

[27:13]

The Mongol Derby — what’s interesting is it recreates the horse messenger system developed by Genghis Khan in 1224. So that was way before the popular Pony Express in Western culture in the United States, where a rider would race to a station, change horses, and keep racing and send messages across this vast empire — which would take months. It wouldn’t take days. In the US, you know, the Pony Express days probably took a couple of weeks. Back in the Mongolian days, they were going from Mongolia to parts of Europe, and it took months — but they were riding fast the whole time.

[27:50]

Anyways, to finish that story, the endurance race in Mongolia is incredible, and they are incredible horse peoples that have impacted all of us in our history.

[28:03]

Now, again, if we jump back a thousand years — what were the sports of horses? We had the racing, we had chariots, endurance, and then other types of races. Then we had jousting — knights on the back of a horse — that was pretty popular. It’s popular in movies. Falconry on horses, mounted archery — yeah, I could see that. I thought this one was funny — horseback wrestling. So, wrestling on the back of a horse — oh geez, okay. And then polo.

[28:37]

So that got me thinking, okay, let’s go down the polo rabbit hole and see what we can find. Because I’ve been involved with polo, I’ve ridden polo horses — it’s a fun sport. Incredible animals involved in it, incredible riders. Incredibly popular in South America — it’s a big one. In the US, it’s big here in this part of the world, and in Europe, and, you know, around the world.

[29:04]

But polo’s origins go all the way back to Iran and Turkey and Afghanistan — the nomadic peoples. And the word “polo” is actually believed to originate from the Balti word pulu, meaning “ball.” Now, what polo is — is a rider on the back, they have a mallet that they swing and hit the polo ball, and you’re trying to score — it’s like soccer. Football is very popular around the world — everybody kind of knows that. You’re trying to score that ball into the goal. And there are obviously different versions and different versions in different countries and cultures, but this all dates back to the…

[29:45]

…Polo’s people — because I found this very fun study: “From Iran to All of Asia — The Origins and Diffusion of Polo.” And this was a study published 10 years ago, and it was talking about the history of polo.

[29:58]

And in ancient Iran, polo was the game — if you were a nobleman, a king, queen, or whatever it was, polo was the game. They estimate that polo was first introduced as some sort of organized sport about 2,200 years ago — 2,250 years ago. So you had chariot racing, you had racing with the Greek games and then in Egypt and other parts of the world, but now you see a different game — polo — emerging over 2,000 years ago. This isn’t something that just came recently; it’s been around for a long time.

[30:35]

And as it spread through the Byzantine Empire into Constantinople — again, modern-day Turkey — into the 4th century, so you’re looking at 1,600 years ago, and then it goes all the way east into China and even into Japan around 700 AD, so 1,300 years ago, polo is right up there as probably one of the oldest equestrian team sports there is. And it’s just amazing to think of the history of the game after playing it in my own life.

[31:09]

Now, the Europeans — the Crusaders — as they came down, they were exposed to polo in the 1200s, so you’re looking at 800 years ago. They took that sport back with them to parts of France and other parts of Europe, but it never stuck. It just did not stick until the British Empire in the 1800s, and then really it started in India. So again, polo — very popular there. The first polo club was actually in Assam, India, in 1833 — the Silchar Polo Club. Then there was the Calcutta Polo Club, founded in 1862. So this is when the modern era of polo comes about — again, exporting these cultures, exporting these sports, and that’s impacted all of us.

[32:01]

When you go specifically to South America — David Shennan, he was an Irish rancher and polo player — he’s known as the father of Argentinian polo. He started the first polo club in Buenos Aires in 1888. And then polo’s just… Argentina is a powerhouse for polo. I mean, it is a massive sport down there. So, very interesting looking at our history and our origins.

[32:31]

Now, the next one — very popular, and it’s what I opened up with — is show jumping, and one of our most accomplished show jumpers of the modern era, Pat Smythe. Now, show jumping is where a rider and a horse are held to a course and they jump over a bunch of obstacles, and the intent is for the horse to jump cleanly throughout the course in a specific time.

[33:02]

I have to give credit to this thesis, and this was done by Ariel Krauss, who wrote this for her honors program at the University of Nevada in Reno, and it’s titled A Warborn Sport: The Evolution of Horse Show Jumping. It was a very interesting read, and as we jump into this in the history — because she lays it out beautifully — I do want to mention cross-country. That’s kind of… this history overlaps it. So cross-country courses are much longer courses for horses — up to 6 km or 4 miles long — and have a bunch of obstacles, depending on the event, up to 36 fixed, solid obstacles that the horses have to get around. These are the ones where the obstacles look like logs, they look natural, could be water, ditches, banks, different things. It’s a cross-country course — like you’re running cross-country with the horse. So their history can be woven into a little bit of this show jumping history.

[34:01]

But what we know about show jumping — not a lot before the last hundred years. I mention cross-country because there probably were some races like that — even the endurance races, they’ve got to navigate around obstacles. Doesn’t mean they’re running around jumping over things, but navigating through rivers, navigating around whatever it was back in the day — they had to go cross-country.

[34:29]

Show jumping in its current form really started a long time ago with cavalry horses. And Frederick the Great — he started horse jumping in the 1700s with the cavalry. He wanted the best cavalry for military use, so that’s probably where some jumping started to come in, where it became a big thing in training. And then cavalry schools throughout Europe, and then eventually in the United States and in South America and other countries around the world — but when you had a military with cavalry, jumping became part of that training regime. It became a part of that horse’s life — they had to be able to jump and navigate obstacles.

[35:18]

Now, if we go back, the earliest instance of any type of horse jumping — we go back to the ancient Greek Xenophon, who wrote 2,400 years ago a manual on equitation. Very, very famous ancient writing — he mentions horse jumping. But again, it’s not till we get to this modern cavalry that we start to see show jumping — and then, probably as part of their training, they probably had some organized informal horse show jumping competitions.

[35:55]

Show jumping only becomes an internationally organized sport with the Olympics in 1912. In Europe before that, you had some local competitions — in France and in the USA in the 1800s, in England or the United Kingdom you had some informal or local show jumping shows — but it doesn’t become an international event until we get the Olympics. And then it’s still all military men competing until the end of World War II — there’s no women. It’s all these military guys in their uniforms going off to the Olympics, competing, showing off their horses, and “Wow, look at us, look how great we are in our cavalry” — but until 1948, where they allowed civilians to compete at the Olympics. And then it wasn’t until 1956 where women were finally allowed to compete in show jumping.

[36:57]

So, an interesting history. The other really interesting aspect of this is Captain Federico Caprilli — and I know my show jumpers probably know that name — he created the forward seat, or influenced the forward seat, in show jumping. Most riders like me, we have deep seats. And when I would train horse riding, I would talk about deep in your seat — get on, get to those horse riding bones where you communicate with the horse with your weight and your legs — all of that that goes into equestrian training.

[37:27]

Well, in show jumping, the forward seat — you are more forward, and you’re more balanced when the horse jumps, and you’re more in motion with the horse. So in the 1920s is really where Caprilli’s theories of horse show jumping and this forward seat emerge. Today, if you go and watch our show jumpers, they are forward on that horse, and they are in tune with that horse as they go over those jumps.

[38:02]

And I’ll admit it — I didn’t have a great forward seat. I felt like I got a good deep seat — I relax my hips and move with the horse no problem. Forward seat — when I did my few jumps back in the day, I was a little… you know. And I’m sure most of you felt that way when you started doing your show jumping career. But it is fun, and it helps train you when you learn how to sit on the horse. And if you do practice a forward seat, it helps your balance and makes you a better rider.

[38:32]

The other big aspect that has impacted show jumping today so much — and also dressage and eventing — was the creation of the FEI, also known as the International Federation for Equestrian Sports. They were created in 1921, and they have helped establish the rules and qualification systems that are essential to competition. You need these governing organizations to have some sort of international, local, and regional competitions. So they’ve been a massive driver of equestrian sport in the last 100 years.

[39:10]

When they look at show jumping today, over the past 10 years they’ve seen a 73% increase in the number of jumping events and a growth of 105% for the five-star event — the top competition. So in 2013, the FEI had registered 1,314 events. In 2018, they had 1,634 — and it’s just growing and growing and growing. And those are the big events — that’s not local jumping competitions, which I know we have hundreds of where I live, around the country each year.

[39:56]

Show jumping is massive around the world. It’s incredibly popular with children, men and women, every culture, almost every country in the world — there’s somebody out there jumping fences or obstacles with their horse. It is that popular. It is an incredible sport.

[40:16]

And I just want to thank all the people that do it, and I get to watch. It’s just fascinating. Now, with the creation of FEI, it also impacted modern dressage. And I’ve talked about dressage in another podcast — talk about incredible, incredible combination of horse and rider. I mean, show jumping and cross-country — that’s a whole… that takes a whole level of athletic ability. Dressage — wow. I mean, just wow. Any of you that ride dressage — just wow. How you train your horses, what incredible riders you are. And that horse and human relationship, that communication — dressage goes back a lot longer.

[41:01]

Now, yes, you’ve had — I’m sure 5,000 years ago — somebody’s jumping a log with a horse, right? I mean, but you know, show jumping really is a more modern — the last 200–300 year — sport. Dressage goes way back, and it’s really deep-rooted in classical horsemanship. It really involves a systematic and progressive training process. So if you’re looking at the definition of it, talking about training — everything’s designed to enhance the horse’s natural abilities, its ability to do movements, its ability to do different gaits. Shows off their responsiveness to the rider, their agility, its balance, and execution of movement. It’s just… do yourself a favor — if you’ve never watched dressage, please go watch a video and just be wow. It is that amazing.

[41:51]

And dressage goes back 2,200 years — now, not as an organized sport, but the importance of classical horsemanship goes way back. I mean, we’re talking — and again, Xenophon, that Greek military commander who has the manual on horse riding and horse training, talks about this. And so you see dressage being important in training horses, training riders. And then you see this development of all these famous riding schools in the last few hundred years — the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, Austria, the world-famous Lipizzaners. I’ve actually been able to watch them perform the ballet — the White Stallions, they call it. Very famous — they’ve been around for hundreds of years. That school was founded in 1572 — so over 450 years those horses have been trained, bred, and ridden there.

[43:00]

So, our modern dressage has been around for thousands of years, but really you don’t see competitions or organized sport until the late 1800s in Europe. Now, the Olympics again was big in bringing dressage to a competitive event internationally, where people from all over the world can come and compete — and that was in 1912. The FEI again was critical in helping push the sport, so they started to do their own Grand Prix outside the Olympics, and in Switzerland the first one was in 1927. And the sport has just exploded. Like, I looked up the statistics — here in New Zealand we have over 180 dressage events every year. The US alone has over 760 dressage events per year. Estimated around the world, at top competition, there’s about 5,500 dressage events. So very, very popular — next to show jumping.

[44:00]

Now, to try to finish out this podcast, I can’t forget the western disciplines. I love talking about dressage, and I love talking about show jumping and racing — and western is the one I grew up on. That’s where I cut my teeth — my bridle was in the western disciplines. And there’s probably a reason for that, because as long as we’ve been riding horses, there’s been people using them in some of these types of things — cutting, reining — but then you have western pleasure and others today. They’re all tied back to cattle ranching. So the Old West in the United States and Canada and Mexico — the cowboys, the Canadian cowboys, the American cowboys, the vaqueros down to Mexico — they’re all rich in culture, they’ve been doing these events for a long time.

[44:45]

Reining doesn’t become an official sport with the NRHA — the National Reining Horse Association — that was founded in 1966. So they promote the sport — there’s different… there’s like 13 approved official reining patterns — the spins, the slides, all of it. Reining horses are just… they’re so beautiful. I loved watching them, I loved riding, trying to do some of these things. It’s a very popular sport in America, especially in the Southwest — Texas, Arizona, California, New Mexico, Colorado — but also in Wyoming, Montana, everywhere. It’s a really big, popular sport today. Each year there’s over 1,000 NRHA-approved shows for youth and adults, and it’s men and women out there competing.

[45:38]

And reining — cutting horses — that one’s been around a little bit longer, over 100 years. There was the first competition in Haskell, Texas, in 1898 — they estimated about 1,500 spectators came out to watch that cutting competition. Again, these were horses that just blow you away watching them. And then in Fort Worth, at the Fort Worth Stock Show in 1919 — that’s where you had a big arena and you had a big competition. But then again, in the later 20th century up until today, very popular sport. Each year, over 1,300 National Cutting Horse Association events are held — over 130,000 entrants. That’s crazy — that is a ton of people working with cutting horses. So, another fun sport.

[46:29]

And then I cannot forget barrel racing — this is a big one, women showing off what amazing riders they are. It kind of dates back to Annie Oakley when you talk about some of this stuff, and in barrel racing in the 1930s — that’s technically when barrel racing started in Stamford, Texas, and it was a figure-eight pattern. Then they changed it to a clover pattern in 1935, but they didn’t start judging until the 1950s and onward. Very, very popular sport. I couldn’t find any specifics on how many, but it’s associated with rodeos. I’ve had many friends barrel race, show me how to barrel race, gone to barrel race shows, I’ve seen a bunch of barrel racing going on. It’s incredible — I just love my Quarter Horses. Just incredible athletes and riders. Like, those riders — those women — are so brave. I always… my friends and students, I’d be like, “You’re crazy!” But I really had a deep appreciation for it, and watching them compete and those horses just explode. I mean, like I said, Quarter Horses — just wow. Can’t catch them.

[47:38]

Finally, I want to talk about Paralympics. This was a first sport that started in 1996 at the Atlanta Games, so now that is becoming a bigger and bigger sport around the world for people with disabilities. And when I talk about therapeutic riding — and I’ve been involved with some of those horses — and seeing what therapeutic riding can do, and not just physical health but also mental health… I think that’s why all of us listening — and you’re listening to this point — you love these animals, and there’s just some connection with them. And when you’re with a horse or horses, or you’re on a ride, or you’re training — there’s just something about it that just improves your mental health. That connection with the animal — it’s just something that you can’t replicate anywhere else.

[48:29]

So I did want to mention the Paralympics, and it is a sport that — to watch people with disabilities… like, going back to the earlier part of this podcast, talking about Lis Hartel — and I’m going to tell her story here soon — dealing with polio, being paralyzed, and still competing at the Olympic Games in dressage. Like, wow. So, I did want to mention that.

[48:53]

But there are so many other sports that I couldn’t cover — mounted archery, we mentioned, I mean, there’s cart pulling, draft horse competitions, eventing, obviously rodeos, roping, bronc riding — my late father did that. Like, it’s just… there are so many things we do with horses. But these were the big ones, and it’s just incredible to see where we’ve gone — from the first chariot races 4,000-plus years ago, to riding bareback in an arena in ancient Greece, to the Circus Maximus in Rome in front of 150,000 people, to racing across the Mongolian Steppe for thousands of kilometers or miles, to a Pat Smythe entering an arena, destroying a barrier that’s been in place since the popularity of show jumping. We have gone so far with these horses — and if you can just imagine, just imagine where we’re going to be in the next hundred years… the next thousand years.

[50:05]

[Music] Wow. It’s so fun — this is so fun to talk about horses, and I hope you’re enjoying this. And if you have any aspect or insight into equestrian sport, the history — maybe you’ve done deeper dives than I have — please email me: podcast@madbarn.com. I would love to read that. It was a fun thing to kind of go in and see some of the ancient art or the pottery of watching, you know, horse races. And I’m looking at these riders with no stirrups, no saddle — they’re bareback, and they’re racing around the arena, like, wow. And then you think — you really do think about the chariot races with four horses — like I said, in Ben-Hur — it’s just incredible. It’s fun.

[50:59]

So, thank you for listening, and please send those emails. If you haven’t yet, if you don’t mind clicking on a five-star review on Spotify or iTunes or any app that you’re using, and put in just a few nice comments — if you don’t mind. This education’s free — it’s all we ask to give back. It really helps with the rankings, and what it does is it gives the podcast more exposure. Again, the whole point of this podcast is to make the world better for you and your horses. I mean, really, ever since I got into education, my passion has always been — I want to make a difference in people’s lives and in animals’ lives, and we can do it together. So thank you for that.

[51:37]

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