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Help the Walk with Donkeys fix the weather damage!
This winter’s weather has been horrible in Ierapetra. Strong, cold winds, low temperatures and heavy rainfall have made us forget that we live just a few nautical miles far from North Africa. Last week we had a horrific storm that lasted two days. The winds were so strong, that my car was nearly blown away twice! Powercuts occurred everywhere in the province, public trash bins were turned over and scraps from roofs and fields were flying during the storm. The sea had turned white because of the wind. Our beloved Walk with Donkeys Sanctuary suffered heavy damage as well. Plastic and metal scraps were blown off their place -putting the…
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A manureman’s story
Hello again! A few days ago I wrote here about the job of a manureman. Now I would like to share with you a funny story from my hometown, Ierapetra, which is narrated on a number of Cretan websites. So here’s the story: In the old times, in Ierapetra lived an illiterate but very cunning man, whose name was Karchimas. He irritated people, drank like a water snake, banged his boots onto the ceiling, hit horses in the buttocks and used to say all the time: “I went to America, but it didn’t work out, so I came back”. As a manureman, he worked day and night on the unpaved…
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Equestrian in the Ancient Olympics: Did you know?
Today I read Xenophon’s On Horsemanship and Hipparchus and, looking at the introduction of each book, I found interesting information about the add of equestrian to the classical Olympic Games, and I would like to share it with you. Besides, as a Greek and equestrian, I couldn’t fail to write about equestrian and the Olympics, right? 🙂 Equestrian was introduced to the Olympics in the 33rd registered Olympiad, that is about 644 BC (I say “about” because the games took place alternatively every 49 and 50 months, as a period of eight years comprises of 99 moths, which is 96 stable months plus 3 intercalary months). It remained an Olympic sport until the abolition…
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Touching videos on Valegro’s retirement
I bet the biggest news for equestrians in 2016 is Valegro’s official retirement from competition. Having won four Olympic gold medals for Britain and loads in top European and world shows with his rider, Charlotte Dujardin, the legendary gelding was decided to be withdrawn from competition at the very peak of his international dressage career. Valegro, a KWPN foaled in the Netherlands in 2002 and shipped to Britain as a three-year-old to Carl Hester’s yard, did not look very promising at the beginning, due to his small height and over-active motion, making Hester unsuccessfully pursue his sale. In the end, Valegro was proven to be a big star, as he…
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Braiding and decorating the mane of a shire horse
Hi! I admire some people’s patience when it comes to heavy braiding! In some cultures there are events where heavy decoration is the norm. I watched this video of a lady braiding the mane of a shire horse for an event and, indeed, I can say that this requires high skill and yeap, big patience!
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The Spanish Riding School of Vienna
Hi again! There’s so much to explore in equestrian if you have the time! Today we learn about the Spanish Riding School of Vienna. The Spanish Riding School is a top equestrian centre in Austria, training students exclusively in classical dressage. In fact, it has been practicing Haute-Ecole dressage for over 450 years, a discipline which appears on the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, deriving from the times of Renaissance. How come for a school in Vienna to add Spain to its name? It’s the Lipizzaner, the equine breed which is the only one used by the school. The breed, brought from the Iberian peninsula in the…