LIPPIZANER

Famed breed of riding and show horse, renowned for its exquisite equestrian ballet performances made famous by the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, Austria. Lipizzaner stallions are used for the highest form of dressage (guiding a horse through a series of complex maneuvers with slight movements of the hands, legs, and weight of the rider), including breathtaking leaps into the air. For all its majesty, the Lipizzaner is a small horse, standing about 153 cm (about 60 in, or 15 hands) high at the withers (the high part of the back, located between the shoulder blades). The powerful body is compact, and it has short legs. The back is long, and the chest is wide and deep. The muscular, arched neck supports a long head. The Lipizzaner has large, expressive eyes, small ears, and flared nostrils. Most Lipizzaners are born brown or black, but lighten in color as they grow older, becoming almost white by the time they are 10 years old. About 1 in 100 is colored bay (reddish). Bays are not allowed to breed. The breed is named for the town of Lipizza, in what was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and is now part of Slovenia, where it originated in 1580 and is bred to this day. Nine Andalusian (Spanish) stallions and 24 mares were imported from the Iberian Peninsula at the direction of Archduke Charles II to produce horses suitable for the royal courts. In 1738, Archduke Charles VI established a riding school for nobility, which used the Lipizzaner. He named it the Spanish Riding School to emphasize the Lipizzaner\'92s Andalusian blood. The Lipizzaner remained the horse of royalty until the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I (1914-1918). American troops evacuated Lipizzaners from their stables near the end of World War II (1939-1945) because they were in the path of the advancing Soviet army. The main breeding stables later were located at Piber, Austria. Each Lipizzaner stallion is branded with a symbol for the stallion line of his mother above a letter symbol for his father's line. Only Lipizzaner stallions perform at the Spanish Riding School where these horses appear in shows regularly. A stallion's first four summers are spent grazing in the alpine pastures above Piber before its training begins. It is trained in the complicated dressage steps for another four years, and may perform into its 20s. The Lipizzaner remains the main harness (cart- and carriage-pulling) horse in Austria, and is a popular riding horse throughout Eastern Europe. Many Lipizzaners are used in circuses, and a few still are used for farm work.

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