Traditional Horseback Archery Enjoys Revival in Hungary

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The ancient Hungarian tradition of horseback archery is enjoying a revival. This is much to the liking of a local horseback archery champion whose special riding school is attracting more and more young people.

Wearing the costumes of the ancient Hungarians who once conquered the Carpathian Basin, actors are practicing horseback archery skills for an upcoming horse theater show called "The Conquest."

World champion and founder of modern horseback archery, Lajos Kassai, is training them in his Kassai Horseback Archery School.

Hungarian tribesmen once kept Europe in fear with their fierce horseback archery - "God save us from the arrows of the Hungarians" was a saying in the 9th to 10th century.

But later the art of horseback archery all but disappeared from history.

At the end of the 1980s, Kassai reconstructed the bow from the time of the Hungarian conquest in the 9th century and started its production.

He also created the code of competition rules for horseback archery, and from the beginning of the 1990s started to spread the new sport first in Hungary, then in Europe, the U.S.A. and Canada.

Kassai won all home and world competitions and set four Guinness Book records. In 2006, with changed horses, he practiced horseback archery for 24 hours non-stop.

[Lajos Kassai, Horseback Archery Champion]:
"For some strange reason, the horseback archery which once created and crushed empires had been forgotten till I revived it. The modern age history of horseback archery began in this valley, this is where I started to get deeply involved with the martial art of our ancestors."

His horseback archery school is dedicated to preserving horseback archery as a cultural heritage, a martial art and a sport.

It currently has 300 students not only from Hungary but also Romania, Spain, Germany and Canada among others.

And Kassai says that training young people is getting harder every year.

[Lajos Kassai, Horseback Archery Champion]:
"Today we need to bring the children closer to the animal, even the animal is another planet for today's children. We need to show them that the horse is a living creature with feelings, with incredible strength and instincts. Every year we have to take the children to the horse from more and more of a distance, and this is why I fear that there will be serious problems with the rising generations."

During the training Kassai teaches his students special techniques necessary for being able to shoot from horseback as well as how to get to know and to feel the horses.

For many students, horseback archery is not just a challenge sport, but a matter of national indentity and pride.

[Matyas Kovacs, Horseback Archery Student]:
"The main thing is that we should not try just to imitate what our ancestors did but we should do exactly the same and then we can become like our ancestors and this is what really sticks to our mind and this is what we can follow."

Like Matys Kovacs they see it as a way of continuing ancient traditions.