White Turf - Horses on Ice...Literally!

Who’s heard of White Turf?

Well till this morning I was as oblivious to White Turf as I am about, urmm, quantum physics, but after chatting to one of our customers who’s attending it this year I thought I’d do some further research and bring it to you in this here Blog.

White Turf is an annual equestrian event that’s held in St. Moritz, Switzerland on the first 3 Sundays in February.  Unlike most such events that are either performed on grass or a sand/composite surface, all competition in St Moritz takes place on snow and ice!  Madness.  Suffice to say if you’re going to take equestrian sport to a whole new playing level (literally) why not go one more and have your very own equi discipline to race on it.  Which of course they have, in the form of Skijoring.

It was way back in 1906 that the sport of Skijoring was established in the Engadine valley in Switzerland.  The premise is as simple as it is scary, in its most basic definition it’s a thoroughbred horse race where the riders instead of being in the saddle are instead long reining them with a pair of skis instead of riding boots.  So imagine a flat race, on snow, with the riders being towed along at speeds of up to 50kph behind their horse and you get the picture.  Like waterskiing only the powerboat is a horse and the surface is snow and not water.  As you can imagine they have their fair share of mishaps, perhaps most notably in 1965 where not a single skier crossed the finishing line!

To find out more about the White Turf, including the other equestrian races and events that happen there, log on to their website at www.whiteturf.ch