Lipizzan

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A Lipizzaner.

The Lipizzan, or Lipizzaner (Slovene Lipicanec), is a breed of horse closely associated with the Spanish Riding School of Vienna, Austria where the finest representatives of the breed demonstrate the "high school" movements of classical dressage, including the highly advanced "airs above the ground." The Lipizzan breed dates back to the 16th century, when it was developed with the support of the Habsburg nobility. The horses take their name from one of the oldest stud farms where the breed developed, Lipizza, a Kras village now known as Lipica (Italian: Lipizza), near Trieste in modern-day Slovenia.

1 Breed characteristics
- 1.1 Color
2 Training of Lipizzan Horses
3 The "Airs"
4 Breed History
- 4.1 Foundation horses
- 4.2 The Rescue of the Lipizzans
5 The Modern Lipizzan
6 Lipizzans in popular culture
7 References
8 External links

[edit] Breed characteristics

Most Lipizzans measure between 15 and sixteen hands. They are compact and muscular, with very powerful hindquarters, allowing them to do the difficult "High School" (Dressage) movements, including the "airs above the ground." They generally have a strong-featured head with a convex profile, set high on a well-muscled, arched neck. They have short cannons, their legs have good bone, and well-sloped shoulders. Their gaits are powerful and elastic, although different in style from the Warmblood breeds seen in many Dressage competitions. Lipizzans are naturally balanced, well-known for excellent trainability and intelligence.

Lipizzans are slow to mature, usually not being put under saddle until the age of four, and not considered fully mature until the age of seven. However, they also are long-lived horses, often performing well into their mid-20s, and living into their thirties. For example, the stallion Siglavy Mantua I was a featured solo performer with the Spanish Riding School at the age of 26 during its 2005 tour of the United States.

[edit] Color

Aside from the rare solid-colored horse (usually bay or black), all Lipizzans are gray.

This young Lipizzan stallion has already begun the graying process.

As with all gray horses, they are born dark and become lighter each year as the graying process takes place. Lipizzans usually gray quickly. They are usually completely white by the average age of seven, though the range varies from as young as four to as old as 10.

Although today most Lipizzans are gray, up until the 18th century there were other coat colors, including dun and bay. Today, it is still traditional for the Spanish Riding School to have one bay Lipizzan in residence, showing respect to an old belief that doing so will prevent bad luck.

[edit] Training of Lipizzan Horses

The traditional training methods for Lipizzans were developed at the Spanish Riding School and are based on the principles of classical dressage. Young stallions come to the school when they are four years old and are trained with gentleness and without undue pressure. It takes at least six years for the horse to be fully trained and become a member of the School Quadrille.

The fundamentals taught to the Lipizzan stallions were passed down via an oral tradition until they were written down in 1898 by His Excellency Field Marshall Franz Holbein and Franz Meixner, senior rider at the Spanish Riding School from 1885 to 1916. They include:

Riding in as natural a position as possible in non-collected gaits in straight lines, so-called straight riding.
Campagne, or elementary dressage consists of riding the collected horse through all of the gaits, turns and manoeuvres while maintaining perfect balance.
The haute école - riding in an upright position with a strong curvature of the haunches (angling of the hindquarters), regularity, skill and finesse in all of the natural gaits, dressage manoeuvres and leaps as adapted from nature. All of the above is to be executed in a methodical manner to the highest degree of perfection.^[1]

The Austrian Federal Stud farm at Piber traditionally does not break mares to saddle. Although some other Lipizzan establishments train geldings to the haute ecole, the Spanish Riding School exclusively uses stallions in its performances. ^[2]

[edit] The "Airs"

The "airs above the ground" are the difficult "high school" dressage movements made famous by the Lipizzans. They include:

The levade: a position wherein the horse raises up both front legs, standing at a 45 degree angle, entirely on its hind legs in a controlled form that requires an great deal of hindquarter strength.
The courbette: a movement where the horse balances on its hind legs before jumping, keeping his forelegs off the ground and his hind legs together as he "hops."
The capriole: a jump in place wherein the stallion leaps into the air, tucking his forelegs under himself, and kicking out with his hind legs at the height of elevation.
The croupade: similar to the capriole, but both fore and hind legs are tucked under the body at the height of elevation.

Usually a Lipizzan horse will not learn more than two "airs" during their performing career.^{[citation needed]}

Other moves include the piaffe, passage, pirouette, flying changes, extended movements, and other Classical dressage movements.

[edit] Breed History

Lipizzan mares, Lipica stud farm, Slovenia.

The ancestors of the Lipizzan can be traced to approximately A.D. 800.^[3] The predecessors of the Lipizzan were desert horses that were brought into Spain from North Africa and crossed on native Spanish horses, creating breeds such as the Andalusian. The Spanish Riding School, though located in Vienna, Austria, takes its name from the original Spanish heritage of both its horses and its riding techniques.

By the 16th Century, when the Hapsburg Empire ruled both Spain and Austria, a powerful but agile horse was desired for both military uses and for use in the fashionable and rapidly-growing riding schools for the nobility of central Europe. Therefore, in 1562, the Hapsburg Emperor Maximillian II brought the Spanish horse to Austria and founded the court stud at Kladrub. In 1580, his brother, Archduke Charles II, established a similar stud in 1580 at Lippiza (now known as Lipica, in modern-day Slovenia), whence the breed obtained its name.

Kladrub and Lipizza stock were bred to the native Karst horses, and succeeding generations were crossed with the old Neapolitan breed and horses of Spanish descent obtained from Spain, Germany, and Denmark The studs also imported more Spanish horses, as well as Neapolitans from Italy, as the years went on. While breeding stock was exchanged between the two studs, Kladrub specialized in producing heavy carriage horses, while riding and light carriage horses came from the Lippiza stud.^[4]

In 1735, Charles VI established the Spanish Riding School and recorded the bloodlines of the Lipizzans. He also built a winter riding hall in the imperial palace in Vienna, which is the home of the Spanish Riding School today.

Beginning in 1920, the Piber stud, near Graz, Austria, became the main stud for the horses used in Vienna. Breeding became very selective, only allowing stallions that had proved themselves at the Riding School to stand at stud, and only breeding mares who had passed rigorous performance testing.^[5]

[edit] Foundation horses

Today, all Lipizzans recognized worldwide trace to six stallions. In order foaled, they are:

Pluto: a gray Spanish stallion from the Royal Danish Stud, foaled in 1765
Conversano: a black Neopolitan stallion, foaled in 1767
Neapolitano: a bay Neopolitan stallion from Polesina, foaled in 1790
Favory: a dun stallion from the Kladrub stud, foaled in 1779
Siglavy: a gray Arabian stallion, foaled in 1810
Maestoso: a gray (or possibly white) Kladruber stallion, a crossbred of Neapolitan sire and a Spanish dam, foaled at the Hungarian stud of Mezőhegyes in 1819

There are also 2 other stallion lines which are accepted as equal to the 6 classical lines by LIF (Lipizzan International Federation). These are:

Tulipan (English Tulip): this line started in the Croatian stud farm of Terezovac of Count Janković. Horses of this line are of Neapolitan descent, crossed with other Lipizzaners during the 19th century and formed the Tulipan line around 1880.
Incitato: the foundation sire of this Hungarian line was foaled in Mezöhegyes in 1802. The Incitato line is derived from Spanish and Italian sources.

These two lines are still found in Croatia, Hungary, and other eastern European countries as well as in North America.

In addition to the foundation stallions, there are 18 mare family lines in the classical tradition. However, some organizations recognize up to 35 mare lines.^[6]

In acknowledgement of the importance of bloodline, every stallion has two names, referencing both the sire's name and the dam's name.^[7]

[edit] The Rescue of the Lipizzans

World War II presented perhaps the greatest threat ever faced by the Lipizzan breed. The breeding stock was taken by the Nazis from Piber to a German-run stud farm at Hostau, in what today is the Czech Republic. Threatened by bombing raids, the stallions later evacuated Vienna for St. Martin's, in upper Austria, where there was little food for human or animals and starving refugees sometimes attempted to steal the horses to eat.^[8] Under the leadership of Alois Podhajsky, then the director of the Spanish Riding School, both the stallions and the equestrian traditions were preserved.

In 1945, the United States Army took control of St. Martins. General George S. Patton, of the 2nd U.S. Cavalry Group, had been a fellow equestrian competitor with Podhajsky in the Olympic Games prior to the war. The two men renewed their acquaintance, and after an impressive performance by the remaining horses and riders of the school in front of Patton and Undersecretary of War Robert Patterson, the Americans agreed to place the stallions under the protection of the United States until they could safely be returned to the people of Austria after the war.

Then, when Hostau fell behind Soviet lines, a plea went out to the Americans from some captured German officers to rescue the horses before they fell into Soviet hands, because it was feared they would be slaughtered for horsemeat. Patton responded. Under the leadership of Col. Charles H. Reed, on April 28, members of Troops A, C and F of the 42nd Squadron conducted a raid behind Soviet lines and accepted the surrender of the Germans at Hostau. Reed later said, the surrender was "more a fiesta than a military operation, as the German troops drew up an honor guard and saluted the American troops as they came in."^[9] Though only 250 horses survived the war, the breed was saved.

In 2005, the Spanish Riding School celebrated the 60th anniversary of George S. Patton's rescue by touring the United States.

[edit] The Modern Lipizzan

A modern Lipizzan, of Italian registry.

Today, though found in many nations throughout Europe and North America, the breed is relatively rare, with only about 3,000 horses registered worldwide. However, their numbers are increasing. Lipizzans still shine in classical dressage, performing the High School "airs above the ground" with ease. Lipizzan stallions are still the "Dancing White Horses," the only horses used by the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. Both purebred and crossbred Lipizzans make excellent riding and harness horses. While popular for dressage exhibitions and recreational riding in Europe and North America, in some countries (such as Slovenia) stallions are crossed with local mares to make good farm horses in addition to being used for dressage. .

Because of their fame and their status as the only breed of horse developed in Slovenia, via the Lippiza stud, Lipizzans are considered one of that nation's most beloved national symbols. A pair of Lipizzans will be featured on the new Slovenian euro coins.

[edit] Lipizzans in popular culture

The motion picture produced by Walt Disney studios, entitled Miracle of the White Stallions (1963) depicted the Spanish Riding School and the rescue of its horses from invading Nazi forces by General George S. Patton. It starred Eddie Albert, Curt Jürgens, Lilli Palmer, James Franciscus, and Robert Taylor. It was directed by Arthur Hiller.

The motion picture Florian (1940) was based on a novel written in 1934 by Felix Salten, the author of Bambi (1942). The story is set in the 1880s and tells how two young lovers met through their love of horses. The movie was directed by Edwin L. Marin and scripted by Noel Langley and James Kevin McGuinness. Its producer, Winfield Sheehan, owned the only Lipizzan horses in the U.S. at the time.

White Horses was a 1965 television series co-produced by RTS of Yugoslavia and BR-TV of Germany, re-broadcast in the United Kingdom. It followed the adventures of a teenage girl who visits a farm where white Lipizzan horses are raised.

In the climax of the submarine thriller Crimson Tide, Capt. Frank Ramsey asks Lt. Cmdr. Ron Hunter if he's ever seen Lippizan stallions, while both are waiting for a critical incoming radio transmission. Ramsey asserts that they are white, from Portugal, and are the "most highly trained horses in the world." Hunter, who rides horses, retorts that they are in fact from Spain and are born black. In the denouement, Ramsey admits his error.