The Olympics are coming and I’m seeing equestrian write-ups in media … it’s inspired me to put together some thoughts about the history of equestrian sports and their meaning in the Olympic Games. — J. Royce
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The 2012 Games of the Olympiad usher in a new four-year cycle, the ancient ritual of our Greek ancestors. After 2700 years horsemanship is still contested in the revival of the Games. Some may wonder why we have horse sports in the Olympics … the answer may surprise you.
The Ancient Greeks
Western civilization began with the idea of the ancient Greeks to find a new way forward, by seeking harmony with nature through reason. As brief as this society was (before again succumbing to war), their moment of artistic creation brought an explosion of discovery—theater, geometry, philosophy, astronomy, democracy, medicine, even the empathetic horsemanship we call dressage—which gave inspiration to a new kind of living as men and not beasts.
This spark, interrupted and corrupted and renewed, has grown to spread throughout the world. The society we live in is the living expression of these ancient ideals.
The original purpose of the Olympics
The original Games began as an effort in unity, to honor mankind’s impulse for striving without the disaster of actual conflict. This was a reaction to just such disaster: at the time of the original creation of the Games (c. 760 BC), the Greeks were recovering from the destruction of their society in an 500-year Greek Dark Age.
No culture in history has revered the horse more than ancient Greek society, and horsemanship of the time was a warrior’s skill. So when our ancestors of Western Civilization established a celebration of martial skills in a new spirit of contest, the transformation of the horse from war engine to artistic, athletic partnership was a clear symbol of the promotion of harmony and peace … upon which it was believed the gods themselves smiled.
Equestrian sports symbolize the spirit of a people
Equestrian sports exercised what the Greeks considered the virtues of man, not only wisdom but Aristotle’s 8 moral virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, courage, liberality, magnificence, magnanimity, temperance. Horsemanship represents reason taming chaos: moral man is granted the crowning seat of nature the brute could never attain.
The celebration of the horse’s athletic partnership with mankind also memorialized the idea of the horse as a gift from Creation. For the ancients, the spectacle of equestrian sport offered proof of the gods’ approval of mankind’s place as leader of the natural world.
The tradition continues
Time has proven the success of the ideals that sparked Western 
civilization. When mankind has remembered the path of cooperation and humility before Creation, society has unfolded amazing wonders of peace and prosperity. A symbol of this path is today as it was from the beginning: the harmonious union of horse and man, able to achieve together more than could be accomplished apart.
Our remembering of this union, our renewed celebration through equestrian sport, does more than recall the ages past … it ennobles us in the ancient tradition of cooperation and harmony that made the success of civilization possible.
Related Links
» Daily schedule of the Ancient Olympics
» History of the Olympic Games