"The Military" - the first term to describe Eventing

I want to recommend two books for anyone interested in the history and origins of English horsemanship and competition. They are "A History Of Horsemanship" by Charles Chenevix-Trench and "The Horse Trials Story" by C.E.G Hope, the latter being about what we call today Eventing.

Pre WW1 military allies in Europe regularly held cavalry competitions. These were somewhat like what we have today as joint maneuvers but with a more individual as well as team competition aspect. Each host country got to determine what elements made up their particular event when it was their turn to put on the competition.

After WW2 the elements became more uniform and these competitions were called Combined Training with five elements. Dressage, Cross Country, Stadium Jumping, Roads & Tracks (endurance) and Steeplechase. Today just three phases are left in typical Eventing competitions.

I came across this picture from the early part of the 20th century. It shows a steeplechase course in Italy in 1914.



This may be one of the earliest pictures of a group jumping the Caprilli's "new" Forward Seat".

Steeplechase was one of the five phases of Eventing and ridden in a group as pictures. Eventually it was determined, when civilians were allowed to compete, that the group Steeplechase format was too dangerous, and steeplechase was changed to a phase where one rider was on the steeplechase course alone, set apart from others by timed departures at the start. This begged the question of how then was the Steeplechase phase phase different from the Cross Country phase. Eventually Steeplechase was dropped altogether as was Roads & Tracks. (You have heard my theory on this - Warmbloods did not do well in Steeplechase or Roads & Tracks where Thoroughbreds did, so the powerful Warmbloood lobby got these phases tossed).

Horsemanship has evolved, particularly in Eventing.