With the Paris Olympics arriving soon – July 26-August 11 to be exact – we thought it would be fun to share 24 interesting facts we found about the equestrian sports at the Games.
1. Canada’s Ian Millar – who won silver in the team showjumping – was the oldest medalist at the 2008 Games in Beijing at the age of 61.
2. The only Olympic medal ever won by a Canadian dressage rider or team was bronze during the 1988 Seoul Olympics. The team riders were Cindy Ishoy, Ashley Holzer, Evi Pracht and Gina Smith.
3. German riding legend Reiner Klimke is still considered the best all-time performing Olympic equestrian athlete. The dressage rider competed between 1964-1988, winning six dressage gold medals.
4. The equestrian sports date to 682 BC during Greece’s 25th Olympiad when a four-horse chariot race was run at the Hippodrome.
Ian Millar. (Thivierr, via Wikimedia Commons)
5. The 1976 games in Montreal had British royalty in the form of Princess Anne competing in eventing.
6. Our own Ian Millar has participated in ten Olympic Games, a record for any sport or athlete.
7. Japan’s dressage rider Hiroshi Hoketsu was 67 when he competed in his second Olympics in 2008; remarkably he first rode in the Tokyo Games in 1964, 44 years earlier.
8. Over 2,000 riders have competed approximately 4,000 times in Olympic competitions since 1912.
9. While riders can be of any age, the horses competing in dressage or eventing can’t be younger than eight years old, or six years old for para dressage. Show jumpers must be a minimum of nine years old.
10. Horse owners of animals on a team must be of the same nationality as the riders by year’s end of the previous year. If a horse has multiple owners of different nationalities, one must have the nationality of the nation for whom the horse will compete.
11. Isabel Werth currently holds the record for winning the most Olympic equestrian medals, with seven gold and five silver to her name.
12. The Canadian showjumping team first won gold in 1968 in Mexico with Jim Elder, Jim Day, and Tom Gayford.
13. Forty years later, the Canadian showjumping team would take the team silver in Beijing (although equestrian events were held in Hong Kong due to quarantine issues on mainland China). The team consisted of Eric Lamaze, Ian Millar, Jill Henselwood and Mac Cone.
Polo was once an Olympic sport. (C)2023 dw_jenkins@mac.com)
14. In 1980 the Canadian Team struck gold at the alternate Olympics in Rotterdam (Canada boycotted the Moscow Games along with 79 other nations after Russia invaded Afghanistan); that team included Ian Millar, Mark Laskin, Jim Elder, and Michel Vaillancourt.
15. Originally only members of the military, and officers specifically, were sanctioned to compete in the Olympic equestrian events until 1952.
16. The FEI, the sports international governing body, first oversaw the Olympic equestrian events in 1924.
17. The Olympics in 1912, held in Stockholm, Sweden, saw the debut of three-day eventing.
18. Past Olympic equestrian events that were cancelled include the high jump, long jump, vaulting and polo.
19. England and Ireland were the only two polo teams to vie for a medal at the 1908 Olympic Games. England took gold.
20. Back in 1912, dressage riders also had to jump as part of the Olympic competition. There were four fences up to 1.10 metres.
21. Equestrian is still the only Olympic sport where men and women compete against each other.
22. It’s also the only Olympic sport that includes an animal.
23. British dressage rider Lorna Johnstone was the oldest woman to compete in the Olympics. Johnstone was 70 when she rode in the 1972 Munich Olympics.
24. The equestrian events also have the best age diversity of any of the Olympic sports, see facts 1, 7, and 23 (unless pickleball becomes an official sport!).
Official Paris Olympics website.
To watch in Canada live online – CBC Gem
Follow daily Olympic reports on Horse Sport here.