the Horse in Sweden – more important than you think

Commitment and fellowship Perhaps what most
distinguishes people with an interest in horses is their
passion. There is a lot more involved than just practicing
the sport itself. After all, horses can’t just be put in a box
after use and taken out again several days later. They have
to be taken care of. They have to be fed and looked after
– every day! And it is also during the everyday routines
that are such a part of horse keeping that people meet on
a social level – at the trainer’s, at the breeder’s, at the riding-school
and at public or private stables. For the great
majority it would seem that the opportunity to mix with
horses and other people is of greater importance than
taking part in competition. For example, almost 90%
of the members of the Swedish Equestrian Federation’s
clubs lack competition licences. And the picture is similar
elsewhere on the Swedish horse scene. Just 10 percent
of the country’s Icelandic horses are active competition
horses. Only 10 percent of the members of Sweden’s
Western Riding clubs hold competition licences. There
are some 60 000 horses of competition-age within trotting,
of which circa 24 000 are trained every year with
12 000 making it to the racetracks.
The act of competing, achieving within the sport, can
thus be seen as a spearhead of sorts. We are used to seeing
top performances from Swedish harness riders both in Europe
and the USA. We have seen international success in
show jumping, carriage driving and dressage. Progress has
been noted too in Three-day event and vaulting. Swedish
Arabian racers win races abroad. And Swedish horse and
rider teams in Icelandic horse riding and Western riding
have achieved success with top-rankings in international
competition.
Grassroots tradition Behind this ‘spearhead’ of achievement
lays a broad range of efforts from a great many
people. Here we have a true grassroots movement, with
everyone working together to get things done. They do
the odd jobs, take care of the horses and muck the stables,
mixing with one another regardless of which stable
or field they may come from. They run clubs, arrange
4 The horse in Sweden – more important than you think
meetings, displays, competitions, outings and courses,
they practice DIY, maintain the tracks, guard the car
parks, clean, serve refreshments - and sometimes argue!
These are horse loving boys and girls, men and women,
parents, families, horse-owners and fellow riders. It is
thanks to this voluntary work that a select few of all of
those involved can practice his or her sport at the highest
level. The horse in Sweden has a grassroots tradition of
availability for all. Trotting has its roots in the use of
Coldbloods in farming and logging. People would race
each other to church or hold yearly competitions on the
frozen winter lakes. The connection between logging
and trotting is still very evident. More than half of all the
land’s trotting racetracks with betting are to be found in
the woodlands north of Lake Mälaren.
The backbone of Swedish trotting is perhaps its mixture
of amateur and professional trainers. There are almost
twenty times more amateur trainers than there are
professional. Many are the successful horses that have
been trained in amateur stables. That equestrian sport
in Sweden has a profile of being accessible to the general
public has its beginnings in Ridfrämjandet (“Promotion
of Riding”), which opened the stable doors for anyone
that wanted to ride. Ridfrämjandet became a part of the
Swedish Equestrian Federation, SvRF, on its foundation
in 1993. And as statistics from The Swedish Sports Confederation,
Riksidrottsförbundet, clearly show, horses
really are for everyone: after football, horse riding is the
largest youth sport in Sweden! Not counting all of the
young people that ride that are not part of SvRF.