Bengaluru’s growth fuels horse riding and equestrian sports

Bengaluru

Syed Anjum got into horse riding several years ago and has witnessed the change in the city through the past cou ple of years. “When I started, there were hardly any people who would come to these academies. Bengaluru has many of them now. Some have come up more recently and some have been there for long. Embassy’s facilities are the best in the city, they have invested heavily in the field and they have all kinds of horses, most of them are extremely expensive,” Anjum said. He also shared that most academies have two types of clients. “I think we are the one of the One would be the regulars who would pay about ten or fifteen thousand a month for their train ing and the second who pay around twenty or thirty thou sand for 25 or 30 classes which they can take according to their convenience.

Normally, the academies provide the horses as purchasing a horse and paying for its upkeep would be an extremely heavy investment. “Having been to several acad emies and events, I have seen more people coming to them over the years, especially kids who are getting these classes and participating in the sports,” Anjum said. Bharath, a trainer at a Bengaluru horse riding academy has been busy these past few years. Schools such as Zippy Equestrian Centre, Stallion’s Valley and oth ers have been steadily acquiring new clients who are going back to the old ways of horse riding, with participation in the sports of dressage, show jumping and polo are seeing more interest. “We are very busy with events these days.

We seem to be getting new clients regularly and many academies are doing well, even though it’s a very expensive thing to do,” said Bharath. While most of the schools participate in equestrian events, others have more unique and altruistic aims. Stallion’s Valley School of Lifestyle focuses on therapy and compassion for people suffering from autism and ADHD. largest in terms of the intake in Bangalore, because our syllabus and curriculum is different and it has to do with lifestyle coaching. We connect the kids with nature and create compassion with the animals. “I have nothing against dressage but show jumping is some thing to do with making a horse jump. It can harm the horses, so we are against those concepts. We have a lot of autistic kids and ADHD kids coming in. We have kids coming in from two, three years old onwards, and adults going up to 74 years old also,” said founder of Stallion’s Valley School of Lifestyle Sandeep Menon.