‘When I was a kid we called it playing’: Hobbyhorsing enthusiast tries to convince TikTok it’s a real sport but fails spectacularly

First, the essentials; hobbyhorsing is a recreational sport that originated in Finland, in which participants run, jump, and step their way through an obstacle course whilst perched upon a homemade hobby horse (a hobby horse, of course, being a toy horse head attached to a stick that you may have pretended to ride on as a young child).

It’s mostly (and rightly) perceived as a fun, gimmicky pastime, but that never stopped the Nordic country from backing the Finnish Hobbyhorse Championships, which may cause one to wonder exactly how seriously this phenomenon can or should be taken.

One such attempt to cement hobbyhorsing as a real sport in the minds of the public has been made by TikTok‘s @kht_duck, whose dressage routine (aka a sort of warmup in which you get a feel for the hobbyhorse and the course) looks to have left her markedly winded. Judging by the comments, however, this behind-the-scenes look at the pseudo-equestrian activity has only put the sportsman’s seal of approval that much further out of hobbyhorsing’s reach.

Indeed, beneath the video of Anna’s excruciating post-dressing cooldown, the comments section was flooded with more than a bit of mockery towards the insistence that hobbyhorsing is a serious sport, pointing out how Anna’s exhaustion — assuming it’s even real — says much more about her own athletic shortcomings than the physical demands of hobbyhorsing.

In any case, the most important thing that one can take away from this is that the value of an activity doesn’t lie in how seriously everyone can take it; in the case of hobbyhorsing, it originated as a fun trend mostly enjoyed by young kids, and his since become sensational enough to earn itself some competitions. We can go back and forth on whether it qualifies as a sport (the definition varies from source to source), but trying to pass it off as something serious won’t do anybody any favors.

And this is just a glimpse into the world of Finnish sports, which houses other such competitions as cell phone throwing (which is exactly what it sounds like), and wife-carrying (in which a man must carry a woman through an obstacle course and cross the finish line before the other men).

It is, again, all great fun, but we doubt anyone is out here dissecting the best technique and model in hopes of getting a competitive edge in a cell phone throwing competition, nor is there probably much metagaming going on in the world of competitive wife-carrying. Take notes, Anna.