Equestrian
Equestrian has been added to the Olympics since 1900
and again in 1912, in a similar format
as to what will be used in the 2004 Olympic
Games in Athens. Equestrian is
the only Olympic sport where animal and man are real teammates.
Also, men and women are on equal terms.
In an ultimate team, a rider and horse work together for many years to
sharpen the skills of grace, daring, agility, and speed.
A women named Lis Hartel overcame a mind boggling obstacle. Lis was born and grew up in Denmark. She participated in the Equestrian event called Dressage. It is explained further down in this article. The 1952 Helsinki Games were opened to everybody and there was only four women competitors. They were the main attraction and, one of them was Lis Hartel who was thirty-one years old. In 1944, while Lis was pregnant, she contracted polio. Although she was almost paralyzed, she was determined to continue in her career as a dressage rider. She began her rehabilitation while she was still pregnant. Lis struggled as she learned to lift her arms, and to regain use of her thigh muscles. Then, her daughter was born a healthy baby, and Lis continued coming back. She started by crawling, then by walking with crutches. Even though she was making much success in her comeback, she wanted to return and compete in dressage. Three years after the attack, in 1947, Lis was still unable to use her legs, she entered the Scandinavian Riding Championships and she finished second. She continued competing and was very successful, so when the 1952 Olympics came, she was chosen as one of Denmark’s competitors. In the Olympics, she impressed the whole world by finishing with the silver medal, and placing second. She even had to be helped on and off of her horse. In the next Olympics, Lis again placed second and obtained the silver medal. Lis Hartel had become an example of a Danish saying:
“Life is not holding a good hand;
Life is playing a poor hand well.”
In pastimes,
Eventing was restricted to only military officers, whereas Jumping and Dressage
Competitions were open to everybody else. Even
though jumping and dressage were open to everyone, only a handful of riders
competed up until 1948.
Up to that time, the modern sport was growing quickly, but very few
competitors competed in the Olympics. They
all knew each other, and the judges accepted the local variations to the pretty
simple rules which existed. When it
was included in the Olympic Games, it was obvious that one set of rules needed
to be learned. In May 1921, ten national equestrian organizational delegations
met in Lausanne to discuss forming an international federation.
There are three different types of equestrian: Jumping, Dressage, and Eventing. Eventing is a three-day event. Each event has an individual and team competition.
Dressage is often described
as horses performing ballet, but it has changed little since the Renaissance.
The word dressage comes from the French word meaning training.
Early European cavalrymen thought of the idea for use on the battlefield
and parade ground. The horses
perform set movements, or tests, in response to the rider’s slight aid and
signal. The event is over three
rounds. In the first two rounds,
the horse and rider perform a set of routine of dressage movements, including
passages, pirouettes and piaffes in a walk, trot and canter.
In the third round, the routines are individually choreographed and
performed to music. The third round
is freestyle. Four days are
dedicated to dressage in the Olympics. The
scoring is done by judges who calculate how well the horses execute the moves.
Jumping is a very popular
event that is both exciting and easy to follow.
It originated in Ireland, and it requires a horse and rider to complete a
course of about fifteen obstacles. Some
of the obstacles include triple bars, parallel rails, water jumps and simulated
stone walls. Penalties are given if
jumps are taken in the wrong order, if a horse refuses a jump or knocks down a
rail, and if the time limits are gone over.
Eventing is a
combination of Jumping and Dressage. It
also adds a third competition of riding a cross-country course on horseback.
The scoring is a series of tables evaluating every day’s performance.
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