Mind the gap

The equestrian gender gap may be closing, but it still prevails in certain disciplines. Luz Wollocombe analyses the shifts, and where the sport gains and loses representation for both male and female riders

- Luz Wollocombe

SO often it’s a brave handful of boys who head off to Pony Club camp, ready to be surrounded by a swarm of girls. Throughout the country, yards are full of teenage girls, grooming and bathing and perfecting their tail plaits while their brothers are playing football or messing around on tractors.

But wait a few years and the young men are rising to the top of the equestrian sports, while many of the girls have given up. The senior ranks of showjumping are dominated by men – while in top-level eventing and dressage, the balance is fairly even. Why does this happen?

The Pony Club is notoriously female heavy, and Tim Vestey, chairman of the organisation, admits “rather embarrassingly” that “out of 23,000 members, less than 5,000 are boys”. This gender imbalance then continues on into ponies, juniors and young riders in dressage, showjumping and eventing. Over the past five years, the percentage of boys in Britain doing pony trials (eventing) is just 7%. The showjumping pony league is marginally better, but still only around 20%.

Look at the top levels, though, and you find a different story. Of the entries for Badminton during the same five-year period, 42% have been from male riders (although a higher percentage of the international riders is male). Coincidentally, around 40% of the British riders in the current FEI dressage rankings are male. But showjumping presents an even more dramatic shift – of the current top 30 FEI-ranked British riders, over 63% of them are men.

WHY don’t boys want to be involved with horses? There is one thing everyone agrees on and that is that riding is not “cool”.