Spanish Riding School entertains London (Includes interview and first-hand account)

The Spanish Riding School (Spanische Hofreitschule) of Vienna, Austria, is the oldest riding school in the world. The school puts on packed-out shows in the Austrian capital (at the Winter Riding School in the Hofburg), and some of the riders go on tour. The School takes the “Spanish” part of its name from the horses which originated from the Iberian Peninsula .

The latest leg of the tour came to London, playing to a packed 12,000 seater event at Wembley.

The arena in preparation for the start of the horse display.

Tim Sandle

The school dates back to the fifteenth century and it uses Lipizzan horses, which are trained for classical dressage. The aim of classical equitation is use the way the horse naturally moves and to cultivate the highest levels of dressage, which is called haute école.

Most Lipizzans are gray, although the ones used by the school are white (the horses become white on reaching eight or nine years of age).

Lipizzan stallions of the Spanish Riding School.

Tim Sandle

The shows given by the riders draw upon four centuries of experience and tradition in classical dressage. The London event was a superb display. The crowd, for the most part, was spellbound from the moment the event began and until the last horse’s tail left the arena. The event was compered by British television presenter Nicky Chapman, who gave some interesting context to the history of the riding school. For instance, classical dressage evolved from cavalry movements and training for the battlefield.

Magestic beauty of the horses, performing on sand within Wembey Arena.

Tim Sandle

The majesty of the white stallions was breathtakingly beautiful. The horses performed some of the most difficult movements in dressage, such as pirouette, passage (where the horse makes a circle with its front end around a smaller circle made by the hind end), piaffe (where the horse performs a highly elevated and extremely powerful trot), and One-Tempi-Changes (a series of jumps). The riders were dressed in a traditional uniform: brown tailcoats and bicorne-style hats, with white buckskin breeches.

Best of all were the highly controlled, stylized jumps and other movements known as the “airs above the ground.”

The “Airs Above the Ground” follows; all horses are under saddle, but the riders do not have stirrups. Movements performed include the levade, capriole and courbette.

Tim Sandle

The Spanish Riding School is worth catching, to see a centuries old tradition continue to be practiced with skill and finesse.

The emblem of the Spanish Riding school, taken from the program.

Tim Sandle