Thoroughbred breeding first began in England due to the crusaders breeding large, heavy horses for their stamina, hard work and the ability to carry a crusader in all his armour and in the middle east horses which were lighter and agile were being bred for their speed.

During the 16th century an english captain became the owner of a Middle Eastern Stallion. He went onto breed this stallion with English mares to produce the line of Herod Thoroughbreds. This particular stallion is actually entered in the studbooks as Byerlye Turk.

Equestrian sport has got to be one of my favourite “horsey” related sports. My main reason for becoming fascinated with this was I enjoyed watching Princess Anne, HRH of Great Britain competing, and subsequently her daughter Zara Phillips. What I didn’t realise for a while was just how long equestrian sport has been around and how it began. The history of this sport dates back over 2000 years and began with the Greeks using dressage to train their war horses.

War horses continued to be trained by using dressage and later on three day events were introduced to test their stamina further. These events consisted of Show Jumping, Cross Country and Dressage.