Fair Girls on Grey Horses

Fantastic news via Fran Jurga’s Equus blog: Hannah Zeitlhofer, one of the two first women to be admitted to the Spanish Riding School of Vienna (video from 2008), qualified as an “Bereiteran’wärterin” on the 1st May. This means she can now take part in the famous school’s public displays. British-American rider Sojourner Morrell dropped out a couple of years ago and is now working as a model, but the new intake of five “elevin” includes four women. Their names are Marlene Tucek, Theresa Stefan, Ulla Reimers and Agnes St George. There’s a photo of Agnes and Hannah here. Marlene Tucek is the daughter of a Vienna riding school owner who has competed in the Iberian discipline of working equitation (a kind of combination of dressage, bull-fighting and cow-work skills).

If you want an idea of the kind of opposition these women faced, check out this blog, which doesn’t seem to have any concrete argument against women joining the Spanish Riding School, but doesn’t like it anyway. It quotes some comment from the time of Hannah and Sorrell’s first admission:

“I am not happy about this decision,” Elisabeth Max-Theurer, the female president of the governing board. …

“I stress that I am not against women – I am only concerned about tradition,” said Max-Theurer, a former dressage rider who won gold for Austria in the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

Well, tough. I found an interview with Hannah from earlier this year auf Deutsch on Rosarot’s blog. Here’s my clumsy translation of one section:

Wie war das für sie als Frau unter Männern?
Da ich die Arbeit im Stall gewöhnt bin war das nichts Außergewöhnliches. Das heißt die Grundarbeit ist natürlich schon ordentlicher und strenger und disziplinierter als sonst. Aber so war das nichts Besonderes. Die Männer im Stall, das sind alles Kollegen. Da gibt’s nichts.

What was it like for you to be the only woman ranked below the men?

Once I was used to working in the stable it was not out of the ordinary.  That is to say that the basic work is naturally very thorough, strict and disciplined as can be. So it was nothing special. The men in the stable were all colleagues. There wasn’t a problem.

Viel Glück, ladies! There’s good tradition and pointless tradition, and I’m sure you can tell the difference.