🎠 back on my hobby horse

embracing absurdity, not settling, sports-washing

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It’s every little girl’s dream: a horse. (*That, and becoming a marine biologist).

Recently, those dreams have been coming true a little more often. 

When equestrians meet the kids of generation Harry Potter, you get hobby horsing - or “vegan horse riding” where people compete on a fake horse. Think: broom stick with a stuffed animal on the top. Lately, this is all over TikTok. One viral video saw people mocking a teenage girl who was tired from the physicality of the competition. But perhaps the joke is on them: the athleticism (running and jumping) is similar to hurdles on a track. The horse isn’t real, but the physicality sure is. 

The sport initially became popular in Finland in 2002 and has more recently been popularised on TikTok. You can get a cute hobby horse on Etsy for less than a hundred bucks. It’s the ethical democratisation of an elite, expensive sport. But it’s also wonderfully ridiculous. And for that reason, I think it’s important to take hobby horsing seriously.

As the world of sport expands, it’s getting way weirder. But before we had quadball (formerly Quidditch) were were already accepting ‘sports’ that blurred lines, like colour guard and rhythmic gymnastics (that’s one where people dance with a ribbon on a stick). Now we cheer for extreme ironing, toe wrestling, shin kicking, chess boxing and even watch people slap each other in the face “professionally.” We also watch people play video games and guess world locations from a digital image. Plus, we tolerate ceding tennis court space to pickleballs. 

Hobby horsing challenges us to stop pretending that you need a real horse to be riding one with its amusing absurdity. We could probably learn something from the camaraderie among these young enthusiasts who are taking the concept beyond a fun sleepover activity. In their dedication, they’re reminding us that tradition doesn’t dictate what sport is, or isn’t, or whom it's for. By reinventing and reclaiming horseback riding in their backyards and basements, they are asserting themselves in a way that I admire so much. Gallop, girls! Yeehaw. 

Other knock offs of elite sport are also obvious echos, like mini putt to golf and go karting to Formula 1. Who decides whether these are hobbies, activities, or sports?

There are other elite institutions that need to be incrementally and unironically remade to welcome new spectators, like the ballet, opera, polo, and sailing. But that remaking is reliant on an audience that’s willing to embrace the strange. The hobby horses are leading the way.

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🛒 Last year Canada brought supermarket CEOs to Ottawa and asked them - politely - to consider ways that they could stabilise grocery prices. While the Grocery Code of Conduct was being considered, legislators have been courageous in modernising the Competition Act through a series of updates (yay!).

Why is the code national? The conduct of the grocery industry is regulated as ‘commerce,’ making industry-specific legislation a provincial domain. The initiative wanted to avoid the noise of different regulatory environments. That makes sense, but it sort of sucks that we’re getting so hyped about what is essentially a handshake deal.

My co-author Denise Hearn and I wrote about this in the Globe and Mail.

While we shouldn’t celebrate scraps, that doesn’t mean we can’t make them count. The Code of Conduct isn’t quite past its best-before date, yet. Now it’s time to enshrine the core principles of this voluntary code in legislation.

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🎙️ In the most recent Lately episode, I got to speak with Simon Houpt about how repressive regimes and big brands use sports to clean up their image.

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