Braving ridicule and mockery, children form community around riding plush horse heads
Unusual hobby arose in Finland.
A new sports activity, substituting the movements of a horse, is becoming more and more popular in Slovakia. In this case, the horse is a plush head attached to a wooden pole called a "hobbík".
Athletes compete in several categories and often create an emotional bond with their hobbík, treating them as if they were alive.
The sport is known as hobby horsing and already has hundreds of enthusiasts in Slovakia, as well as critics who laugh at the perceived senselessness of such an activity.
"If curling is a sport, which involves sweeping ice under a puck, so jumping over obstacles with a pole with a horse's head attached to it can be a sport as well," says Diana Migaľová Baschierová, founder of the Slovak Hobby Horse Association, a civic association founded in 2020, the first of its kind in Slovakia.
Finding a deeper meaning
Hobby horsing caught the attention of the Cvacho family from the village of Varín, northern Slovakia. They learned about the relatively new sport thanks to social media and videos. Although public awareness of the activity among Slovaks is rather low, over time Marianna Cvachová and her daughter Marianna got to know the hobby horser community.
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