The female half of Finland’s population has become the author of a new trend of modern youth — toy horse riding. We will tell in a new Popsop survey whom and by what hobby-horsing attracts, as well as what is posted in social networks by its followers.
Horse riding, where toy horses are used instead of live horses, is called hobby-horsing. Especially popular this sport became in Finland, where it got its origin. The main target audience, of course, is girls, ladies and even women. According to Ze.tt statistics, about 10 thousand teens meet regularly to conduct joint trainings. In addition, there are already officially organized competitions for this sport. And there everything is organized really adultly: ride and jumps are evaluated at the tournaments. Girls carefully jump on toy horses through barriers, trying to repeat the elegant movements of riding a real horse.
Of course, even a comparison of hobby-horsing with real equestrian sport seems strange. But putting aside prejudices, why not? After all, this has its own reasons. Most girls who ride toy horses are very fond of real horses, but just do not have money and ability to ride them. By the way, it is very expensive to practice horse riding in Finland, so for many girls imaginary riding is an excellent compromise.
Of course, hobby-horse in Finland has not only fans, but also haters — namely, all those who do not deal with it and do not understand how it can be done seriously. Girls have to defend their right to a favourite sport and the right to call their hobby a sport. Recently, even a documentary film about the everyday life of imaginary riders was released in Finland. One of the girls, filmed in this movie, says:
«Most of my friends do not know about my hobby. Although, I was almost caught many times. There were guys who started to troll me. Then the whole class joined them. In life we have hard and easy times. And now is just the hard time. But I just have to «jump over» this».
Judging by the motivating trailer for the film, the girls are not going to give up in their struggle for the right to call hobby-horsing a sport. And most recently, on April 23, the annual hobby-horsing championship was held in Helsinki, where the judges named the best Finnish rider of this year.