Seeing a horse and rider on the side of the road or on a trail, or maybe just going by a horse arena, it makes most people think, ‘Wow that rider is just sitting there.’ Truth is, they aren’t just sitting there. If the rider is sitting properly, their heels,hips,and shoulders are all aligned and their back is perfectly straight and their shoulder blades are exactly 1 inch apart. Horse back riding is a sport and here is why.

First, let’s take a look at some other sports and compare. Soccer for example: you’re working your legs. Basketball: you’re working your arms. Softball: you’re working with hand/eye coordination.

Well with horse back riding, you’re working all of those things. For example let’s start with legs. Your legs, just like your hands, are being worked with all of the things you need to tell your horse. You put your left leg on the horses side if you want to go left, and it’s the same for going right or forward or backwards. It’s pretty easy if you know what you’re doing.Then with your hands you’re working them by getting the horse to put its head down and not letting them just walk where ever they please, and keeping their whole body where you want so that they don’t take off on you. You’re also working your hand/eye coordination because riding a horse is a lot like driving a car. You don’t drive looking down do you? If you did you’d have a hard time driving. Getting your license would be even harder. So if you have an obstacle you have to go around you have to be able to work your hands and know where you’re going at the same time.

Like most sports, you have to be a good athlete to play, and be in shape to play, and know just what to do when you’re in a bad situation. In every sport you have the chance of getting hurt. Horses are very dangerous animals, although they don’t usually intend to hurt you. Anytime you get on a living breathing animal, anything bad or good can happen. That’s why we take precautions when we ride, with our helmets. Horse riding in general cannot be that dangerous. Some may think that football is more dangerous than riding a horse, but I know a lot would beg to differ. It’s not so much the riding that is dangerous, it’s the falling part that makes most people take cautions when riding. But in the sport football, they are always smashing their heads against one another, causing serious injures if not permanent. Horse riding, if you fall yeah that can happen, but it’s not as likely as football.

In comparison, like most sports they have a certain uniform, where players on the same team wear one color, and have different numbers. In some horse sports they have a team, such as polo, the Olympics or just riding in a local or big show. But some of those such as horse racing, Olympics,and riding in a local or big state show, each horse and rider choose colors of their choice. Preferably to match they color of the horse so it looks at least decent. But usually in the Olympics the colors are picked already for them because it is required,just as it would be with soccer and basketball. Though some people may disagree with this information because it just doesn’t seem “right” because only a few horse back riding activities have teams, I think that it is still a sport whether in a team or not, because take golf for instance, they don’t have teams. Yet it’s still considered a sport. I think it’s just the way some people look at it and how they take in this information.

Given these facts it’s clear that horse back riding is a sport. It has all the same features of many sports all combined. So next time you see a horse rider, think of what you just read, because it’s definitely harder than it looks.