Monday, Nov. 20, 1950

"A Part of Culture"

Dashing across Austria with his tanks in the spring of 1945, ex-Cavalryman George S. Patton paused long enough to watch a prancing white stallion being put through some remarkable parade-ground paces. General Patton had heard the story of Vienna's famed Spanish Riding School and its Lipizzan* horses. Their classical routines went back to the 16th Century, their bloodlines to Spain and Arabia. When Patton learned that the Nazis had appropriated the Lipizzans and sent 200 mares and foals to a town in Czechoslovakia, he acted with characteristic dash. He sent a tank column to bring them back to Austria. "America," said Horseman Patton, "must save some part of the old European culture."

By last week, 110,000 U.S. horse fans had had a look at the culture that had so impressed George Patton, and most of them were impressed too. Under Col. Alois Podhajsky and his riders of the Vienna school, the Lipizzans were the No. I spectacle of Manhattan's National Horse Show.

Their routine was unvaried. At an imperceptible signal from stiffly erect Colonel Podhajsky, eight smartly dressed riders doffed their two-cornered hats in a courtly bow to the crowd. Then eight white stallions paraded in stately fashion through an intricate precision quadrille. The spotlight event was an exhibition of cadenced, old-school courbettes, croupades and caprioles, all of them stylizations of the leaping, twisting, fighting and frolicking of high-spirited horses in pasture.

Among the most spectacular was the fighting pose of the courbette. Without apparent urging from its rider, the performing Lipizzan reared high on its hind legs, executed a series of forward jumps while pawing furiously, almost like a boxer, with its forelegs. Such a maneuver, Colonel Podhajsky explains, was naturally in high favor among medieval cavalrymen when ever they found themselves hemmed in by foot soldiers.

U.S. fanciers who had missed the Lipizzans in Manhattan might not have another chance for a while. To his disappointment, the colonel had not been able to interest U.S. impresarios in taking the horses on tour. Next week, after performing in Toronto, the Lipizzans will be on their way back to Austria.

* All time record: 388 by Jockey Walter Miller in 1906.

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