Ski Joring - Horse and Ski Combined
Equestrian ski joring is a winter sport where riding and skiing is combined: a horse is pulling a person on ski. Thereby the horse can be ridden by a horseback rider or driven from the person on ski or newer, on a snowboard. It is a very speedy sport that is gaining immensely in popularity. Its origin is Scandinavia, where people used reindeer, horses or dogs for pulling the person on ski and to travel over certain distances fast. Some sources consider this sort of transportation to be as old as 2500 B.C.! Nowadays it has become already a very specialized and highly competitive sport. Especially in North America (USA, Canada) and in Europe (France, Switzerland) is ski joring popular: it has been introduced the first time at Olympic Winter Games (1928) in St.Moritz (CH).
NASJA and NESJA are American Associations that would like to make the sport more and more popular in North and North East America. The competitive version of this winter sport is about speed, jumping over snow ramps and slalom tracks. To be honest, it looks pretty much fun!
This is the version without a rider and on a snowboard. How to ski behind a horse?The safer version is probably the one with rider: the ski-sporting person can fully concentrate on balancing, which can be in certain situations quite a struggle, as slight surface alterations may already cause imbalances and lead to accidents at a higher speed. What ski exercise equipment and riding equipment is needed?The horse needs to be saddled and wearing a breast collar to fix long traces or ropes, that the person behind holds in his hand. The rider steers the horse.The ski should have a length of maximum 150cm, as otherwise the danger of getting too near to the hind hooves is increasing considerably. The skiing person needs to wear a safety helmet, ski sun glasses, good ski or snowboard clothing and best ski boots that fit.
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Photo from Franglo
