The police make the UK proud in the Czech Republic!
The International Mounted Police championship in horse Riding has been held for the last 19 years in Brno. This year the Czech Republic Police kindly invited 4 ambassadors (2 riders and 2 representatives) from the UK following ACC Rod Hanson's visit to the games last year.
The competition was between Mounted units from several areas including South Moravian (Brno), Prague, Hungary (Budapest), Germany and Russia.
The championship is a true test of mounted police horsemanship. The first element involves completing a course of cross country jumps which is timed followed by the second element - a testing course of obstacles and 'nuisances' which each rider must complete to the best of their abilities.
Some of the obstacles included riding through spraying water after opening an umbrella on horseback, jumping over a fire jump, shooting targets from horseback, dismounting/remounting, walking accurately over a raised zig zag platform and knocking bottles from three posts while jumping obstacles!
The final competition was a knock-out Puissance test, which involves raising a 1m show jump by 10cm each round.
There were 32 competitors in total, and only 3 were riding police horses which were not their own mounts, our 2 UK competitors and the Russian entry. These riders only had a very short time to get used to the horses before the competition began.
PC Tracey Brown (SYP) and PS Craig Richards (Met) rode their horses initially in the Ceremonial Parade with all 32 riders on Friday afternoon which arrived in the Freedom Square of Brno City Centre. There they were met by heads of various police departments and Executive police directors who made speeches and officially opened the Mounted Championships.
The ceremony was well attended by local residents who also enjoyed the excellent police brass band. On Saturday the games took place and this was also well attended by members of the public. The 2 UK riders did an excellent job, especially considering they were riding strange horses. Tracey came 5th overall in the championships and PS Richards won the Puissance competition. Our time in Brno was an amazing experience.
We met some very interesting people and exchanged many of our own experiences and views in relation to working in a mounted unit and the police force in general. We were very fortunate to be given a tour of the Brno mounted dept by the Chief of mounted police SubLt Libor Blazek, who also showed us a video of how their mounted police work and duties involved.
The trip was an experience we will never forget. The officers and representatives of Czech Republic police were thrilled that we had attended from the UK and we were very humbled by their gratitude and kind treatment of us while we were there.
