Equestrian vaulting: the horse sport you can start without riding

Equestrian vaulting is gymnastics on horseback, and everyone in this episode says the same unlikely thing about it: you can start with no riding, no gymnastics and no particular level of fitness. Curious Equestrian spent a day at RDA Woodbridge as the centre launched vaulting for the first time, meeting Anne Hardwick, chair of British Equestrian Vaulting, two-star vaulter Annika Sievert, and Lizzie Bennett, The Para Vaulter, who started the sport from a wheelchair and coaches there from this month. Host Anna Louise Claydon, who is scared of heights, has a go herself. A sport that began with Roman cavalry and 18th-century circus acts, and appeared at the Olympics once, in 1920.

In this episode:

- Why Anna says you need no ability at all to start, and what the first sessions actually look like

- What Anna looks for in a vaulting horse, and why temperament is settled long before movement

- The other 23 hours: herd turnout, hacking and pole work, and why a vaulting horse that is only lunged does not last

- The hat question, handed straight back to us, and where RDA rules and FEI rules part company

- Why the barrel and the mechanical horse exist: rehearsing the biomechanics so a real horse never pays for the mistake

- Annika Sievert on the fall at Saumur that should not have happened, and what the sport gave her that school never did

- Lizzie Bennett on blacking out during every upside-down move, and what ten years of very small steps changed

Find the clubs and coaches:

British Equestrian Vaulting: britishvaulting.org

Find a club near you: britishvaulting.org/clubs

Suffolk Vaulting Club, Poplar Park, Hollesley: suffolkvaulting.com

RDA Woodbridge & District Group: rdawoodbridge.org.uk

Lizzie Bennett, The Para Vaulter: instagram.com/theparavaulter

Vaulting at the FEI World Championships in Aachen runs 13-16 August 2026 and is streamed online: aachen2026.com

Curious Equestrian

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