Wednesday, 21 March 2018

What is Dressage?

The word 'dressage' means training in French. Defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "The art of riding and training a horse in a manner that develops obedience, flexibility, and balance, dressage is the ultimate test of a horse and rider's control and partnership. 

It consists of a 'test' - a set sequence of movements that must be performed at the correct marker of the arena. Riders must learn this test by heart and are given between 1 and 10 marks for each movement by the judge(s), giving the overall mark.



These tests take place in either a 20 x 40 metre arena, for lower level competitions, or 20 x 60 metres for any higher level tests. These arenas are laid out with letter markers, so that the movements are performed in the correct place.
60 x 20m layout



No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.

The Geography of Success

Traditionally, countries such as Germany (with riders such as Isabel Werth and Heike Kemmer) and the Netherlands (e.g. Any van Grunsven) dom...