Many
riders will have heard of Captain Federico Caprilli, the brilliant
Italian Cavalry Officer who introduced the 'forward seat1.
He was appointed senior instructor at the Italian cavalry school of
Pinerolo, and although he died tragically in 1907 at the relatively
young age of thirty-nine from a riding accident, his influence on the
whole concept of cross country riding and jumping was immense. He
realised that the whole role of cavalry was changing in that it needed
to move quickly across country which involved crossing ditches, fences
and banks, water and whatever other obstacles they encountered. This of
course necessitated a degree of jumping which had hither-to been
largely unnecessary for cavalry formations. The forward seat solved the
problem and although resisted by most of his contemporaries is now
accepted and no-one today would consider jumping a fence leaning
backwards, which was the accepted method pre-Caprilli.
The reason for this preamble is not that I seek to give an equestrian
history lesson for which I am not qualified, but to question the result
of the forward seat on saddle design. Although the forward seat has
totally revolutionised the method of riding, the basic design of the
saddle has not changed for several hundred years and has taken no
account of the totally different imposition of the rider's weight on
the horse's back, especially when riding across country where so much
time is spent leaning forward and standing in the stirrups. Because of
the position of the stirrup bars, which are fixed at the front of the
tree, it is not difficult to appreciate that the rider's weight will be
imposed on that area of the panel that lies behind the scapula and on
to the trapezius muscle, probably no more that approximately 20%of the
area of the panel. It is only when the rider is sitting in the saddle
that the weight is evenly distributed over the whole area of the panel.
There is in fact a great deal of photographic evidence depicting the
rear end of the saddle completely leaving the horse's back when the
rider is standing in the stirrups, and while this is not constant or
permanent, it proves that little or none of the riders weight is
carried on the rear 75% of the panel when the rider is standing in the
stirrups. This state of affairs is further compounded by the position
of the girthstraps which are fixed approximately a quarter of the
distance from the front of the tree. As someone who has been fitting
saddles on a daily basis for some years, it is evident that when
girthing up a new saddle there is a tendency for the rear end of the
panel to lift off the horse's back. This is because the saddle is girth
up 'off centre'; consequently as the girth is tightened the new
uncompressed flocking under the girth compresses, resulting in the
panel pivoting on the uncompressed flocking in the waist of the panel.
As the saddle is 'ridden in1 the flocking in the panel compresses to
its working form and the lifting will be less evident, nevertheless,
when the rider's weight is lifted from the seat and transferred to the
stirrups the rear of the saddle will lift because it is fixed at the
front and pivots about the centre.
While I do not pretend to have the answer to the problem (if indeed
there is a problem), I thought it worthwhile to establish what effect
the forward seat has had upon the distribution of the rider's weight on
the horse's back, since I find that many experienced riders,
instructors and certainly saddle makers appear to be unaware what is
happening.
Could it be that the forward seat introduced by Caprilli should have
resulted in corresponding modifications to the design of the saddle in
order to take account of the Caprilli method of riding? Whereas for
centuries the rider's seat rarely left the saddle, that is no longer
the case and many saddles were held down by straps fixed to both the
front and back of the saddle, the McClellan saddle used by American
Cavalry and being itself a derivative of the Hungarian Light Cavalry is
one example.
Finally I would hasten to add that my purpose is not to instruct, merely to question, in the hope that the debate ensues.
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