One of the first pieces I every wrote for Equestrian Reality was called “Why golfers don’t understand equestrianism”. This was 9 years ago and they still don’t understand it. Nor do ball sports players. Nor do people who do athletics. I think you have to take part in equestrian sports to understand it. Even then you mainly just understand that we are all insane. 

Nothing entertains me more than someone trying to tell me how hard their sport is. My equipment is alive with a mind of its own, weighs over 500kg and could choose to be a teammate or to kick me in the head. Tell me again how hard it is to hit or throw the inanimate thing?

Picture the scene, you are heading off to play golf. You clean the clubs, you plan your day and you go to set off but at the last moment your clubs decide that no, not today satan they do not wish to be lifted into your vehicle and they escape to destroy your lawn and poo everywhere. That’s your life right there before you even get to the venue. Then when you get to the venue, it’s all good hitting the ball but that ball might not stay on track. You might think you are all set for a hole in one but at that last second that ball might just dive left or right without any warning or it might just grind to a halt just shy of the hole.  

Imagine playing tennis and your ball decides that it does not quite like that left quarter of the court because “it looks different”. I mean you might not think it looks different but there is a small shadow and it is a slightly different colour than last time and needs to be treated with extreme suspicion.

Fencing with live equipment – imagine that? Well, that could be quite dangerous you might think. Yeah, bit like sticking a bit of leather and metal on an animal big enough to kill you and jumping into giant puddles and over gaping holes in the ground at top speed. That could also be quite dangerous, but we do it and we call it eventing. 

When you head home from your sport with inanimate equipment you probably just clean and store it at best and that is that. We don’t – we have to check the equipment hasn’t tried to self-harm in transit. We wash down the equipment. We maintain the body salts. We worry about whether the legs will be twice the normal size in the morning. We worry about how the equipment feels about the day even if we ourselves are one incident away from and a and e visit. We fret about maintenance and diet and spend insane money just keeping the equipment intact. 

With other sports, once you have purchased your equipment, that’s pretty much it aside from accessories and upkeep, right? We buy equipment to put on the equipment. We buy equipment to travel the equipment in. We buy clothes for the equipment. Sometimes the equipment decides those clothes need a new leg or neck hole and add that right in for us so we fix it or we buy more clothes in a different colour. 

WE BUY SHOES FOR THE EQUIPMENT. 

If that sentence isn’t enough to convince a non-equestrian not to mess with us I don’t know what is. We are not operating on the same logic. We buy the equipment very expensive shoes several times a year and we then hope the equipment doesn’t use those same shoes to stand on us especially because our own feet are usually not as well taken care of. 

You worry about your poise and physique as an athlete. We survive on anti-inflammatories and the contents of a first aid kit from Dealz while getting physio regularly for the equipment in case of any mild discomfort. We hand over our credit card for a vet bill while buying cheap pain killers to wash down with regret juice (aka wine). If a bruise isn’t bigger than our hand its grand and it doesn’t matter if we are lame out of the saddle once we are able to get on and stay on. 

No matter what sport you are playing, I reckon we win every time because our equipment is our teammate. Equestrianism is an experience you have to achieve to understand. It’s when you call and they answer. It’s a horse getting you out of trouble with a fifth leg. It’s a neck nuzzle after a bad day. It’s throwing your heart over a solid object and hoping your body follows. It’s dancing as one. 

It is two hearts one sport. 

It is a form of insanity that’s good for your soul.