Cavalry and the Olympic disciplines.

Eventing as a test of the cavalry

Eventing is the discipline whose army roots are plainest. Eventing Nation (Sally Spickard, 11 November 2015) traces it to tests of cavalry officers and their horses and links each of its three phases to something a cavalry horse had to do:

• Dressage showed the horse could stay calm and obedient on parade.
• Cross-country showed stamina over long distances and rough ground.
• Jumping showed the horse was still sound and willing after a hard day.

Summaries of two other sources, a sport video platform's magazine and a show-jumping website, say several European countries long called eventing "the Military", that it entered the 1912 Stockholm Olympics under that name, and that it grew from 19th-century "charger" competitions, which they describe as long-distance rides by officers. We saw these only as search summaries, and one is promotional, so treat those details as unconfirmed.

The long "endurance day" that once sat between dressage and jumping, with its roads and tracks and steeplechase, was part of this inheritance. Olympedia records that Sydney 2000 was the last Olympics to run that long format; how and why it was dropped is on eventing safety history.

Who designed the Olympic event?

The equestrian programme came to the Olympics through a Swedish court official. The Olympic Federation of Ireland and Wikipedia say Count Clarence von Rosen, Master of the Horse to the King of Sweden and an IOC member, proposed it at the 1906 IOC session in Athens, and that dressage, eventing and jumping first appeared together at Stockholm in 1912.

Credit for the eventing format itself is put two ways. US Eventing says von Rosen devised the first event for 1912. The sources above that trace eventing to earlier cavalry charger tests suggest the format was older than the Games. The research behind this page found von Rosen's role as the man who proposed the programme better supported than the idea that he invented the format alone.

Officers only, until 1952

For its first four decades Olympic riding was an army sport. The Olympic Federation of Ireland says competition was limited to male military officers until 1952, when an IOC decision opened it to civilian men and to women for the Helsinki Games. Wikipedia adds that in 1952 women were admitted to dressage and all men became eligible in every discipline; women followed in jumping in 1956 and in eventing in 1964.

The United States shows how closely the national teams were tied to the army. US Eventing says every US team for major championships from 1912 to 1948 was supplied by the US Cavalry, and that the United States Equestrian Team took over team management and selection after 1948. According to Wikipedia, US membership of the FEI passed from the US Cavalry Association to the American Horse Shows Association after the 1936 Olympics.

The women and civilians who followed are covered on equestrian sport at the Olympics.

Caprilli and the forward seat

Show jumping owes its modern riding position to an Italian cavalry officer. Horse Canada's "Horses and History" article of 28 August 2013 and Wikipedia say Federico Caprilli, born in 1868, developed the forward jumping seat after watching horses jump loose, without riders. It replaced the older style, in which riders jumped with long stirrups, legs pushed forward and bodies leaning back over the fence. He became chief instructor at the Pinerolo cavalry school and its offshoot at Tor di Quinto, near Rome.

Horse Canada's account of how the method spread:

• At the Turin trials of 1902, it says, Caprilli set a high jump record of 2.08 m on Melopo and a long jump of 7.40 m, while the German team did poorly. Horse Canada is the only source for those figures, so they are unconfirmed.
• A German officer, Rittmeister Arnold von Gunther, took up the method about eight years later, according to the same article, while the German army regulations of 1912 kept the upright seat.

Caprilli died in 1907 after a fall. The place is given two ways: Horse Canada says he died in Pinerolo when his horse slipped on icy cobbles, while a search summary of Wikipedia places the fall in Turin. Wikipedia itself warns that its Caprilli article leans heavily on a single source. A claim that he gave a demonstration at the 1906 Games could not be confirmed and is not included.

The Tor di Quinto military hippodrome in Rome is listed by the Italian Army as the headquarters of the Equestrian Military Centre of the Lancieri di Montebello Regiment. We saw that page only in search results.

The disciplines today

The three Olympic disciplines are no longer military, but their structure still reflects the tests described above. How each is run and scored now is on the eventing, show jumping and dressage pages.