Giddy-up – Alison Healy on hobby horsing

It’s around this time of year that I think longingly of the sporting achievements of my childhood. I, and many other 1970s children, were enthusiastic participants in the Olympics, the RDS Horse Show, Wimbledon and any other random sporting event that was televised.

The beauty of it all was that we didn’t need to leave the back garden – or in our case, the farm. While our city counterparts were flying over child-made speed ramps on their Raleigh Choppers, we were re-enacting these sporting events with great gusto in our field of dreams.

Old tee-signs from a pitch and putt course were repurposed as tennis rackets when Wimbledon kicked off. We set up our court in the farmyard which meant that slow-moving cows ambling in for milking were forced to run the gauntlet while we embraced our inner Martina Navratilovas. But I’m sure Martina, or Chris Evert, never had to climb a step ladder to fish the ball from the cow-shed gutter.

The Olympics had endless potential for children living on a farm. Broken shovel and rake handles served as javelins, and we never needed to search for a wall as a backdrop to the handball event. In our minds, we were Nadia Comăneci and Olga Korbut when we ungainly tumbled our way around the field in the gymnastics events, and balanced precariously on hay bales imagining they were beams.

Hard Border – Frank McNally on a visit to the Korean Demilitarised Zone

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Transmigration of Seoul – Frank McNally on a long-awaited trip to South Korea

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Son of the soil – Colm Keena on the occasional delights of getting our hands dirty

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The ‘Bots’ marks the seasons in our busy city

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But it was during Dublin Horse Show week that we really showcased our skills. We made fences from old barrels and branches and giddy-upped across them on our imaginary horses. When it came to the speed round, we slapped our hips to make ourselves go faster and get that imperceptible edge over the siblings. Blue fertiliser bags were laid down to act as the water jump and I don’t believe that Eddie Macken or Paul Darragh would have sailed across these obstacles with more panache than we did. We spent hours fighting over horse names for our handmade entry sheets. My trusty steed, Autumn Gold, never refused a fence but was utterly useless when it came to the triple bars.

Little did we know that we were ahead of our time as we galloped around on our imaginary horses. Now, it’s a popular pursuit in several countries. Welcome to the world of competitive hobby horsing. This sport recreates showjumping and dressage competitions, but without the horse. Our modest budgets never stretched to accessories, but these competitors use the trusty hobby horse – a stick with a fabric horse head glued on top. It began in Finland, which is not surprising. Finland is, after all, the country that came up with the Wife Carrying Championships, Milk Stool Throwing and the Air Guitar World Championships so it has a track record in elevating niche pursuits. And it regularly tops the polls as one of the happiest countries in the world. We were very happy jumping around the field on our imaginary horses so perhaps hobby-horsing is a route to instant joy?

The competitors certainly look very happy, but also intent on their job, when they are aiming for a clear round. Many of them are girls between the ages of 12 and 25 and if you think this is some gentle trotting around, think again. Some of these hobby horse riders are surprisingly athletic, jumping over fences more than a metre high. And all while not tripping over the hobby horse. They have certainly impressed Horse and Hound magazine, the leading authority on all things equine. An article about hobby horsing noted approvingly that the hobby-horse high-jump record in Finland was 4ft 7in (1.43 metres). The National Finnish Hobby Horse Championship Games are a great draw every year and this year’s event in June attracted some 2,000 visitors and more than 250 competitors, some travelling from countries such as the US, Qatar and Canada. While reports put the total number of Finnish hobby horse enthusiasts at more than 10,000, my reliable source in the Finnish Hobbyhorse Association says she believes the true figure is much higher than that. And that’s straight from the horse’s mouth.

Finnish filmmaker Selma Vilhunen brought the phenomenon to international attention when she released the documentary Hobbyhorse Revolution in 2017. Today, countries such as Australia, France, the Netherlands, Russia and Ukraine have hobby horse associations and the only question is, when is the Dublin Horse Show including a hobby-horse class in their schedule?

I’m just sorry that the sport has come too late for me. I hung up my imaginary reins and put Autumn Gold out to pasture many decades ago. But I can rest easy with the knowledge that we trotted so the following generations could canter.