What equestrian sport is, and which disciplines it covers.

The three Olympic disciplines

The Olympic Federation of Ireland (OFI) sums up Olympic equestrian sport as three disciplines, each with a different test of horse and rider:

Dressage

Horse and rider perform a set series of movements. Judges mark the quality of each movement and the overall impression of the test. The OFI likens it to ballet. The dressage page explains the marking.

Jumping

A course of around 15 obstacles has to be completed within a set time. The aim is a clear round, and penalties are given for knocking fences down, for refusals and for going over the time. The show jumping page sets out the FEI's penalty tables.

Eventing

The same horse and rider take on dressage, cross country and jumping, and the OFI calls it the most complex of the three. The eventing page covers how the scores are added up.

The OFI also points out something unusual about the sport: it is one of the few Olympic sports in which men and women compete against each other on equal terms. That was not always so. According to the OFI, Olympic equestrian competition was open only to male military officers until 1952, when a decision of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) opened it to civilian men and to women.

How the Olympic programme grew

The OFI gives this sequence. Jumping was the first equestrian discipline at the Olympic Games, in Paris in 1900. At the IOC session in Athens in 1906, Count Clarence von Rosen proposed adding equestrian events, and at the Stockholm Games of 1912 jumping, dressage and eventing all appeared on the programme.

Two later additions are recorded on Wikipedia's page about the FEI, a secondary source: para dressage has been on the Paralympic programme since 1996, and jumping has been part of the Youth Olympic Games since 2010. British Dressage's own timeline agrees on para dressage, placing its Paralympic debut at Atlanta in 1996.

The FEI's disciplines

Internationally, the disciplines below are governed by the FEI (Federation Equestre Internationale). The list of what it governs has changed:

• In a 2018 release carried by US Eventing, the FEI described itself as the sole controlling authority for international events in jumping, dressage, eventing, driving, endurance, vaulting and reining, plus para-equestrian dressage, which it took on in 2006, and para driving.
• Reining is no longer on that list. EquNews reported in November 2021 that the FEI General Assembly had approved statute changes removing it, because the FEI must be the sole governing body of its disciplines and the US reining body had not agreed to that.
• Wikipedia, a secondary source, now lists six FEI disciplines, two of them with para versions: dressage and para dressage, driving and para driving, endurance, eventing, jumping, and vaulting. It adds that horseball and tent pegging are recognised under regional governance.

Each has its own page here: para dressage, endurance, and driving and vaulting, alongside the three Olympic disciplines.

Formats run by national federations

Much of the sport happens at national level, in formats the FEI does not run. National federations publish their own lists:

Reining is a good example of a format that left the FEI but carries on nationally: Equestrian Canada's rulebook keeps a Section K for reining and para reining.

Hunters, jumpers and equitation

Hunter and jumper classes, both on US Equestrian's and Equestrian Canada's lists, are judged in different ways. An Equisearch article from Practical Horseman (July 1999) explains the difference:

• Hunters are judged subjectively on the horse's style, movement and overall picture, sometimes including conformation. The format began as a test of whether a horse was suited to the hunting field.
• Jumpers are scored objectively on faults and time, and the fastest clear round wins.
• Equitation classes are judged subjectively on the rider.

What this site covers

This site covers riding and the FEI disciplines, the national formats around them, the gear riders and horses use, and safety and welfare as the bodies publish them. Polo has its own site in The Gear Sports family, so it is not covered here, and neither is horse racing.

The pages describe the sport; they do not teach it. Riding and horse handling are learned from a qualified coach or riding school. The how people learn to ride page sets out the training structures that bodies such as the British Horse Society, the Pony Club and Equestrian Canada publish.