What make Lipizzan horses so special?
It's the breed associated with the Spanish Riding School of Vienna where the finest trainers and riders preform movements of classical dressage, including the famous"airs above the ground" which hold been made famous by Lipizzaner's. Lipizzaner's are trained for about 6 years in the past they can preform as part of the school and only stallions are used surrounded by their performances
Karin's post was very accurate.
Just to expand a moment or two bit, after the raid in 1945 only 250 horses remained, it took frequent years of extremely careful breeding to save the Lippizan. Even today the breed remains special with just around 3000 registered horses.
Another interesting thing roughly the Lippizan is that the classic grey is the dominant color. It is very rare to find a bay or black. The unusual black lippizan is considered good luck.
The Lippizan is categorized as a baroque horse, other baroque breeds include Andalusian and Lusitanos. Baroque horses are prized for their agility and strong build and are uniquely suited for classical dressage.
Whether or not you prefer them over other breeds there is no denying that they have an amazing history and taking back. Baroque horses are not generally my cup of tea but they are beautiful horses that are amazing to watch. If you ever attain the chance to see a performance by the Spanish Riding School you will not be disappointed.
They aren't special. Some breeds are super expensive for no reason at all, and the Lipizzaner is one of them. They tend to be pretty good at dressage.
The crucial reason people like them so much is because they can do enormously advanced, difficult dressage steps and high flying jumps and rears. They are also enormously beautiful and they are very often grey or "white." Lipizzans get something done in many shows around the world showing off magnificent jumps and breathtaking rears. Going to a show is fun--I've been to one.
Sit stern, Relax, and enjoy the show.
idk i don't think they're that spencial..
i have always loved arabians
I think that a lot of the cachet associated with Lippizaners have to do with their history as a breed. Derived from Spanish/Andalusian/Arab stock, they were used in Austria as ceremonial horses for the Austrian royalty and upper classes, as well as cavalry mounts; less well certain, they were used as coach horses and for other ceremonial driving purposes.
When the second World War broke out, the horses and the breeding operations be taken over by the Germans. The Germans looted some of the best of the breeding stock of Lippizaners, as well as some of the Arabs from the Polish studs they overran, Thoroughbreds and other breeds, with the idea of using the horses to create a "super breed" of horses for the German "supermen." Yuck.
The bulk of the breeding stock be in danger of being overrun by the Russian troops surrounded by the closing days of the war. The Russian troops were in pretty impossible shape, and when they captured farmlands held by the Germans, they mostlly slaughtered the animals on the farms in lay down to eat. Sadly, a heck of a lot of the finest horses that were contained by German-held lands that the Russians overran were slaughtered and lost forever to the gene pool. If you do any studying at all of horse breeding in Eastern Europe and the German-held territory during the second world war, you get a touch for the sheer destructiveness of the final days and the terrible conditions that prevailed during the days around the end of the war, when for abundant desperate refugees and military servicepeople on the run from the enemy, the greatest use for a horse was about 700 pounds of meat. Again, yuck.
In this scene of carnage, the Austrian men who have responsibility for the Lippizan breeding stock made a daring dash across battle lines to the American forces underneath General George Patton. Patton was a man who had come up in the American Cavalry service when cavalrymen in fact rode horses, and he had competed in the Equestrian events of the pre-war Olympics (before WWII, the Equestrian events were restricted to military competitors). Known for his love of horses, the Austrians feel they could appeal to him to save the LIppizaners.
Patton responded and in a highly unofficial mugging, he helped the Austrians to bring a nucleus of the LIppizan breeding stock into safety. Subsequently, after the war, some of the other horses the Germans have taken were tracked down and returned and so out of the ashes of the program that had been destroyed by the period of war, the horses were saved and a new breeding program begin.
Objectively, although the Lipizanners are beautiful and have elegant vertical performance through the knees and hocks at the collected gaits, they aren't what the judges look for in a high-scoring international-level Dressage horse. That's one sense why there aren't that many of them. They continue to be used surrounded by the Spanish Riding School in Austria, and there are touring troupes of them that are based on North America, although these aren't directly associated near the Spanish Riding School.
In the pleasure and show driving community, Lippizans are highly appreciated as formal driving horses. They have a good breeder plinth distributed throughout Europe and North America now. Thankfully there are enough Lipizzaners within private hands that they will continue to be bred and to thrive in the adjectives.
Anyone who loves horses and history would do well to get a copy of a couple of the non-fiction books that deal near the resurrection of horse breeding operations in post-war Europe. It's amazing.
This is one book I recommend: http://www.amazon.com/Miles-Go-Biography...
Alois Podjasky, who was director of the Spanish Riding School contained by the post-war reconstruction years, has written a number of books that contract with dressage and also with the Lipizzaners, but he's not an easy read. There's profoundly of good stuff in the books, seriously of interesting history, but Podjasky was a very opinionated man and (IMO) you sometimes have to grit your teeth to catch past some of what he says.
Fiction-wise, Marguerite Henry wrote "White Stallion of Lippiza" which is a good read as a book for young at heart people. If you can, get hold of an edition that has the color illustration by Wesley Dennis.
Good fiction books for young people about post-war Europe and the re-enactment: Rowan Farm and The Ark by Margot Benary-Isbert. Not in print now but used copies are available and well worth the rummage, IMO.
They are the only breed that be breed to attack and trample humans.
If you read up on the beginning of the breed, they where breed to knock down and trample anything their rider asked them to. If you hold seen them in full "showing", each movement is designed by the rider to do as much wreck and cause as much fear in the rival as possible.
It is a sad fact of life that humans use such handsome animals to do their dirty work. But if they didn't we would be without breed as beautiful as this.
I go and seen them at Cops Collesium! They are beautiful. Something about with the sole purpose being bred and used by the king of Austria in the first years of the world and in the period of war.
Answers: They are compact and muscular, with very powerful hindquarters, allowing them to do the difficult "High School" (Dressage) movements, including the "airs above the ground." They generally own a strong-featured head with a convex profile, set high on a well-muscled, arched collar. They have short cannons, their legs have pious bone, and well-sloped shoulders. Their gaits are powerful and elastic, although different in style from the Warmblood breeds see in many dressage competitions. Lipizzans are naturally suspended, well-known for excellent trainability and intelligence
they are amazing horses... but so is every other humane of horse.
Along with what the other answerers said, I'd recommend watching "The Mircale of the White Stallions" (I think that's the title) - it's a movie approximately the horses and a true story about how an army officer saved the whole breed from extinction.
