#mounted games

TENT-PEGGING IN SOUTHERN PERSIA. "WELL TAKEN"

Photograph by Captain A. Heinicke, Shiraz, Southern Persia

Filmed by Shelley O'Rourke

Have you ever walked by a school yard, only to see a horde of children play some made up, chaotic little game that only they seem to fully comprehend? yeah now imagine those children having access to an unreasonable number of horses

Take a look at this screencap from the Royal Welsh Mounted Games and explain to me what exactly they’re doing

Every singly picture of this discipline I found looks more like some cavalry painting and less like a fun weekend activity for your brood:

The battle of waterloo would’ve been over in ten minutes if these kids had been involved

These madlads are essentially playing a series of short, adrenaline-fuelled minigames on their ponies. The games themselves can be best described as the love child of barrel racing and jousting, of all things.

I’m dead serious on the jousting part, someone looked at this mess and decided that the only way to enhance the fun even more would be to hand out sticks and yell “charge”

I am utterly terrified :)

To be honest, back when I was that age I probably would’ve enjoyed living out my violent tendencies armed with nothing but a stick and a pony just as much as they seem to do. These kids also have a habit of, uh, routinely leaving their horses back for a moment.

Seldom do you see someone remounting so gracefully at a full-on gallop. Their style of rapidly remounting can be best described as-

fucking pray for your dear life and YEET

Let’s conclude this rant that started out weak and lead nowhere by taking a closer look at one of the more chaotic screenshots I took of this event:

In this screencap alone, we got

rapid remounting manouvers from our lad with that palomino on the left

their friend just kinda barreling away from the chaos (valid)

approx. two kids showing off their lackluster hoola hoop skills inbetween ponies galloping at full throttle

the grey on the right, both riderless and apparently unstoppable

several additional ponies lacking riders, however they seem a bit more chill about that

Look what I did for @thespectralbones of her awesome FanFiction Little Equestrian Academia! You should check it out, it's great.

mounted games

or hell, its even fun to look at pictures of it, because its both ridiculous and somewhat insane,

I mean, look

just

its a beautiful testament to how off the fucking wall horse people can be, I’ve played these, my mom and my aunt have played these, it’s amazingly fun and takes a serious amount of skill, and a pony willing to go fast and do these things 

here’s a video from Italy, its about a minute long, but its a good example of how wild this sport is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSlSRbbzXw0