How long has dressage been an olympic sport

Montreal Los Angeles Seoul Barcelona Atlanta Sydney Athens Beijing Skip to main content. Toggle navigation MENU. About Equestrian at the Olympic and Paralympic Games. At the Paralympic Games, only Dressage is contested. In fact, there is scant evidence that they were ever applied in the battlefield either, nor even in portraits of historic figures. Such movements would take too long to perfect in an expendable war horse and, with the levade presenting his belly to enemy foot soldiers, the horse would have become a standing duck.

The first, by Federico Grisone in , was deemed cruel, even by contemporaries. Had he opened a school there, how different might things have been? Serious interest in dressage took a very long time indeed to gestate in Britain. British equestrian horse rider Lorna Johnstone takes part in the dressage event at the Olympic Games as the oldest competitor in the games, age 70 years, Munich, September 7th Another factor was lack of homegrown horsepower, as the British Thoroughbred is primarily bred to run and jump.

Her daughter, Jane Kidd, Mrs Loriston-Clarke and others worked tirelessly to persuade the British horse community to breed its own sport horses, even if it meant using Continental foundation stock. Today, unfortunately, we have an even smaller appetite for long-term breeding gambles. Gifted riders such as British team captain Carl Hester import young horses in the raw and train them up; others may spend six- or seven-figure sums on the finished article.

Picture: Alamy. The concept of dressage dates back as far as BC when the Athenian historian and soldier Xenophon completed his 'On Horsemanship' manual. However, it wasn't until the 16th and 17th centuries that dressage began to develop as an art form with the sporting side arriving in the 19th century.

The concept of producing obedient, supple and responsive mounts was essentially a military idea - the better schooled your horse, the better he would be in battle. However, this was also combined with a desire by the nobility to be seen 'about town' on magnificent steeds with exaggerated movement which clearly demonstrated their ability as horsemen. And so 'dressage' was born.