Dressage
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50 free Dressage trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Dressage is the sport in which a horse appears to dance while its rider seems to do nothing at all. Behind that stillness lie years of patient schooling, a vocabulary borrowed largely from French, and a tradition that runs from ancient cavalry manuals to the Olympic arena. This quiz covers the whole picture: the movements judges look for and how tests are marked, the letters around the arena, the tack and dress code, the classical riding schools of Europe, and the riders and horses who became household names. There are questions on Olympic history, rules that came and went, and a few celebrity cameos too. It suits riders preparing a pony club quiz night, fans who tune in every four years, and anyone curious about why the horses skip, spin and trot on the spot. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches you something.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01At the first Olympic dressage contest in 1912, horses had to jump which object as it rolled towards them?
A barrel
A barrel was rolled at each horse as the final obstacle, after five ordinary jumps of up to 1.10 metres. Riders could also earn bonus points for riding with one hand.
Q 02Which rapper watched the Paris 2024 dressage in breeches and tailcoat alongside Martha Stewart?
Snoop Dogg
Snoop Dogg had told NBC's Today show that he would bring carrots and apples for the horses. He arrived for the team medal test dressed like a competitor.
Q 03Which country sent a 71-year-old dressage rider to London 2012, a man who first competed at the 1964 Olympics?
Japan
Japan's Hiroshi Hoketsu was the oldest athlete at both the 2008 and 2012 Games. He rode in show jumping at Tokyo in 1964, then waited 44 years to return as a dressage rider.
Q 04The capriole, a dressage leap in which the horse kicks out in mid-air, takes its name from which animal?
Goat
Goat is the root of the name: capriole means leap of a goat. The horse jumps straight up, kicks out with its hind legs and lands on all four feet at almost the same moment.
Q 05Which wife of a 2012 US presidential candidate co-owned Rafalca, a dressage horse at the London Olympics?
Ann Romney
Ann Romney bought the mare with two partners in 2006. Rafalca and rider Jan Ebeling finished 28th in London, short of the final round for individual medals.
Q 06Lis Hartel won Olympic dressage silver in 1952 despite being paralysed below the knees by which disease?
Polio
Polio struck Hartel in 1944, and afterwards she had to be helped onto her horse. Hers was the first medal a woman won in an individual Olympic sport in direct competition with men.
Q 07Which traditional piece of dressage headwear did the FEI outlaw from 2021 in favour of protective helmets?
Top hat
Top hat wearers had one extra year, because dressage was exempt when helmets first became mandatory in most horse sports. A riders' petition to keep the tradition was turned down in November 2020.
Q 08Which US general approved the 1945 raid that saved the Spanish Riding School's brood mares?
George S. Patton
George S. Patton approved the mission, Operation Cowboy, which reached a stud farm at Hostau days before the war in Europe ended. Disney retold it in the 1963 film Miracle of the White Stallions.
Q 09The word dressage comes from French, where it most commonly translates as which everyday English word?
Training
Training is the heart of the sport: the international federation defines dressage as the highest expression of horse training, with each test ridden from memory.
Q 10Which film composer's Olympic Fanfare, heard at a 1984 dressage display, inspired the freestyle World Cup?
John Williams
John Williams wrote the fanfare for the Los Angeles Games. A former rider who watched a champion perform to it dreamed up a contest ridden to music, and the World Cup series began in 1985.
Q 11Which horse, known at home as Blueberry, won individual Olympic dressage gold in both 2012 and 2016?
Valegro
Valegro also set a freestyle world record of 94.3% in London in 2014. His farewell performance two years later was televised live by the BBC.
Q 12In which European capital has the Spanish Riding School practised classical dressage since the 16th century?
Vienna
Vienna houses the school inside the Hofburg palace, where riders perform in a white hall built between 1729 and 1735. The name honours the Spanish horses in its bloodlines.
Q 13Which breed, born dark and turning white with age, performs dressage at the Spanish Riding School?
Lipizzaner
Lipizzaner foals are usually born bay or black and lighten over six to ten years. The breed takes its name from the stud at Lipica, in present-day Slovenia.
Q 21Which letter marks the midpoint of a dressage arena's centre line, directly between the markers E and B?
X
X sits at the very heart of the arena, halfway along its 60-metre length. Nobody knows for certain why any of the arena's letters were chosen.
Q 22In which French town is the Cadre Noir, the black-uniformed corps that preserves classical dressage, based?
Saumur
Saumur has housed the corps since 1828, first as instructors for the French cavalry. Its riders now belong to a national riding school under the Ministry of Sports.
Q 23Which ancient Greek general wrote On Horsemanship, a treatise often called the starting point of dressage?
Xenophon
Xenophon described sympathetic, systematic schooling of the horse about 2,400 years ago. Federico Grisone's manual of 1550 was one of the first notable European riding treatises to follow his.
Q 14Which Dutch stallion became the first dressage horse to score above 90 percent, at the 2009 European Championships?
Totilas
Totilas and his rider went on to sweep all three dressage golds at the 2010 World Equestrian Games. Weeks later the stallion was sold for a price estimated at €9.5 million or more.
Q 15Which dressage movement is a highly collected trot performed in place or nearly in place?
Piaffe
Piaffe has the horse lower its hindquarters and bend its hind legs deeply while stepping almost on the spot. It entered the Olympic test at the 1932 Los Angeles Games.
Q 16At the Paris 2024 Olympics, dressage riders competed in the grounds of which former royal palace?
Versailles
Versailles hosted all three horse disciplines of the Games, with 200 riders competing there over eleven days.
Q 17Which three-phase horse sport opens with a dressage test before cross-country and show jumping?
Eventing
Eventing is often described as an equestrian triathlon. A three-day event usually spreads its dressage tests over the first two days.
Q 18Which German rider won dressage medals at seven Olympic Games between 1992 and 2024, with team gold every time?
Isabell Werth
Isabell Werth won all but one of her championships from 1992 to 2000 on a horse called Gigolo. Her seven Games also brought one individual gold and six individual silvers.
Q 19Which Dutch rider won individual Olympic dressage gold at three Games in a row, in 2000, 2004 and 2008?
Anky van Grunsven
Anky van Grunsven won in Sydney on Bonfire, then in Athens and Beijing on Salinero. She was pregnant with her first child when she took the Athens title.
Q 20Which bridle, also called a Weymouth, is the traditional tack of top-level dressage horses?
Double
Double is the name because it carries two bits, a slim bradoon and a curb, worked by four reins. Horses at the first Olympic dressage contest in 1912 already had to wear one.
Q 24Quarantine laws moved dressage and other horse contests of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics to which European city?
Stockholm
Stockholm had also staged the first Olympic dressage contest in 1912. In 2008 the horse sports again left the host city, moving from Beijing to Hong Kong.
Q 25Which horse, named like a Dutch painter, carried Nicole Uphoff to Olympic dressage gold in 1988 and 1992?
Rembrandt
Rembrandt was thought too spooky and sensitive for the teenage Uphoff until a noted coach urged her family to keep him. The pair won four Olympic golds in all.
Q 26Which German rider won six Olympic dressage gold medals between 1964 and 1988, three of them on Ahlerich?
Reiner Klimke
Reiner Klimke rode at six Olympics from 1960 to 1988, the first of them as an event rider rather than in dressage. He also won six world championship golds.
Q 27Which British para-dressage rider won three gold medals at each of the Sydney, Athens and Beijing Paralympics?
Lee Pearson
Lee Pearson was born with a condition that affects his joints, and as a boy he was carried up the stairs of 10 Downing Street by Margaret Thatcher. He was knighted in 2017.
Q 28Which German city hosts the CHIO, a summer horse show whose dressage title is one of the sport's most prized?
Aachen
Aachen stages show jumping, dressage, carriage driving and vaulting at the same festival each summer. The club that organises it was founded in 1898.
Q 29In which Swiss city is the FEI, the world governing body for dressage and other horse sports, headquartered?
Lausanne
Lausanne is also where the idea took shape, at an Olympic Congress in May 1921. The federation itself was founded in Paris that November.
Q 30In dressage, what name is given to the helper who writes down a judge's marks and comments during a test?
Scribe
Scribe is the usual title, and the job is also known as pencilling. It lets the judge keep watching the horse instead of looking down to write.