Horseshoes

An outdoor sport performed by two individuals, horseshoes can be traced back to the second century. The shoes’ rings or plates made of iron were hammered on the feet of the horses. Such practice was evident around the east of Europe and west of Asia. In Rome and Greece, athletic games were conceived out of religious festival. Among the four national events established by the Greeks was called the Olympian composed of archery, chariot races, putting the weight, discus throwing and boxing. For discus throwing, the tool employed has the same form as with the modern quoit but not in dimension and heaviness though.

Discus throwing, as the name suggests, was performed by pitching with a thong by way of a round opening in the middle. The strap is then released by the individual through swinging so that the tool employed would reach a far distance. With this sport being tackled, you may be asking what the connection with horseshoes is. This is the story, it was actually a custom where camp loyalist of armies from Greece who could not yet afford then the equipment, obtained the shoes of horses and made a stake. They then started to play with the number of horseshoe which later on, became popular.

Historians though cannot determine when horseshoes became official however, it is clear that it originated from discus throwing. When the Revolutionary War happened, the duke of Wellington, England was able say that the battle was victorious because of the pitchers that employed the shoes of horses. By 1869, the country created regulations that administered the sport. It was there that the distance of nineteen yards from the stakes started. The individual has to stand in the same level with the stake and has to release the tool in his hand upon making a first step. No weight requisite but the exterior width should be eight inches only.

With the regulations created, it was made clear that the ground surrounding the stakes should be made of clay. Also, all the measurements were obtained in the middle of the closest sections of both the tool employed and stake. These then were the early guidelines in horseshoes which was even followed by the Americans when it was introduced in the United States. There were no championship tournaments yet nor records of the individuals who played but by 1909, the sport slowly archived. Even minus the documents, horseshoe turned out to be a favorite leisure among the armies sent to war.

Well, as origins of horseshoes would speak, it had a lot to do with the camps of the armies from Greece. As the military men went back home after war, they introduced the sport to their neighbors who themselves became interested. The popularity of which spread out until construction of arenas started all over the area. As horseshoe gained acknowledgement, championship tournaments were also in the works. The first professional competition was held in Bronson, Kansas on the summer of 1910. A certain Frank Jackson was proclaimed as the winner but ironically, he was never heard to own any shoes of the horse but has been practicing though.

Frank Jackson, the winner of the first horseshoes championship tournament, practiced by holding his own shoe, not of a horse, employing his finger surrounding the heel calk in order for him to pitch. As he continued he regularly rehearsed, he became used to striking a ringer above a two- inch stake and laid his other shoe above at the same instance so that the opponent will not be given a wonderful chance to score a point. What Jackson performed actually became one of the foundations of the horseshoe rules until the regulations evolved making it survive up to this present juncture.