Mondial du Lion, the young event horse world championships held at Le Lion D’Angers was a celebration of the pleasant face of the horse world.

The competition is for the stars of the future, with a championship for 6yos and 7yos at this stage of their career. The three phases of dressage, cross country and show jumping are designed to test these young horses on ability and performance, but more importantly, all aspects primarily ask just enough questions to take horses to the next stage of their careers, and to build confidence for the future.

Horses and riders travelled from as far afield as Russia, Poland, Sweden and Portugal to participate, and whilst it was the more prominent nations involved in the ribbons, most horses and riders ran well.

The team at Le Lion did a really inventive job on fence design without compromising the ‘jumpability’ of the obstacles. In both jumping disciplines, all the fences were beautifully dressed with flowers, shrubs and even vegetables, and they have to be congratulated for producing a great show.

For the side attractions, the main arena played host to various  ‘spectacles’, not least of which was children dressed up as indians on little ponies putting on an impressive display, even down to standing on the ponies backs in canter!

There was a stallion parade, including both in hand and ridden entires, and it was wonderful to see the eventing legend of the French teams in the nineties, Yarlands Summersong, 24 years young and still looking good as he lapped up the adulation showered on him.

Most stunning of all, though, was the appearance of the heavy horses harnessed to what were the carriages for ‘La Poste’ back in the day. All stallions, they were in various formats from pairs, tandem, single, four in hand, and something I hadn’t seen before, three abreast.  The breeds represented were  Percheron, Breton, Cob Normand and Comtois.

Whilst marvelling at their power and presence, the over-riding emotion is bittersweet – these gentle giants have served us for centuries, and how sad it is that their existence in the current world is principally due to their meat value of their progeny.