Share
Horzing Around
It's never any fault of the officials, never...
Ep. 7
•
In horse sport, organisers and officials dodge accountability while riders are left to shoulder the fallout. Here’s one more example of how that story plays out, and why the status quo is finally starting to feel unbearable.A couple of months ago, a few meters after the final fence at a national championships in showjumping in one of the Nordic countries, a horse stumbled on a makeshift arena barrier. The was injured so bad it had to be put down.
To get the latest scoop and or the full stories behind the Horzing Around article recaps please head straight to the website of Horzing Around and sign up for the newsletter.
Don't forget to share, like and subscribe to the podcast and give it a great review on the various platforms it's been published. By doing so you help other find this little place in universe.
More episodes
View all episodes
6. The Horses Were Not Trained
04:01||Ep. 6But here’s the truth we rarely speak aloud. When your horses live somewhere else, the person who cares for them holds enormous power. While you, the owner, often have only their word to go on. That’s a vulnerable position, yet everyone pretends it’s normal. But when the truth finally shows up. It often arrives quietly.Like a moment where something that should be easy... isn’t. Or a basic skill that should be solid... wobbles. When a horse that should be confident... hesitates.5. It is not personal
01:22||Ep. 5Here’s what fascinates me, cause why does this logic evaporate the second we step into the Olympic disciplines? Let a showjumper switch riders or a dressage horse move to a new stable and suddenly the sport treats it like a Shakespearean betrayal. People whisper. People sulk. People take it as a personal insult to their entire existence.4. Dressage drama
01:28||Ep. 4The story goes like this: a freelance journalist visited a CDI3* show with a camera smaller than today’s smartphones and ended up being interrogated like someone had tried to break into Fort Knox. No signs banning photography. No rules posted. Just a mystery woman demanding ID, photographing a press card, and insisting on an email address, all while refusing to identify herself. Later it turned out she sits on the national federation’s board and runs the event. If dressage didn’t have something to hide before, it certainly looks like it now.3. Start before you're ready
01:07||Ep. 3This is a recap of one of the articles on Horzing Around. Talking about the consequences of starting something before being ready which include a higher risk of failure, substandard results, as well as negative impacts on personal well-being.When half a division can’t answer a standard three-star question, the issue isn’t the fence. It’s the readiness of the people tackling it. These are the riders that start before they are ready, and so far the system let them. But if we truly care about horse welfare, then “being ready” can’t be optional. It has to be the standard. Otherwise, we’ll just keep replaying weekends like this one, for all the wrong reasons.- 02:34||Ep. 2The new study has pushed the limits of ancient horse DNA research and uncovered a previously unknown branch in the horse family tree, and it all started with two fossilised horses found in an open field in northern Europe.Researchers working at the famous Middle Pleistocene site of Schöningen, in what is now Germany, managed to extract and sequence mitochondrial DNA from two horses that lived around 300,000 years ago.
1. Helmet Gate
01:29||Ep. 1Every sport has its “you’ve GOT to be kidding me” moments, but showjumping seems uniquely committed to delivering them at the absolute worst possible time. The 2025 GCL Super Cup in Prague the past weekend delivered drama, just not the kind anyone expected. Instead of a jump-off or a time fault deciding the championship, it was a chinstrap. A rider’s helmet strap came loose mid-round, nobody stopped him, the round was completed, and then, long after, the jury disqualified him. Just like that. But the story didn’t end there. Because the real twist? The complaint that triggered the disqualification allegedly came from another team!