Horse Jump

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This, believe it or not, is about jumping over things on horses.[1] Deep ravines are a perennial favorite, though other things can be substituted. It probably helps if your horse is cooler than average. Quite often, writers will not see any particular difference between making a jump with a horse and making it with a vehicle, since everyone knows horses are just an old-fashioned type of motorbike anyway.

Examples of Horse Jump include:


Anime and Manga

Comic Books

  • Lucky Luke's horse Jolly Jumper got his name as showed in the story Lucky Kid. A young Lucky Luke on a young Jolly Jumper is fleeing from a lot of wild buffalo, when they come to a cliff. Jolly Jumper jump over, but the buffaloes fall down.

Film

  • Toy Story 2 features Show Within a Show "Woody's Roundup" where he and Bullseye the horse jump over the ravine in order to get to Jessie and Stinky Pete. Unfortunately, the episode ends on a cliffhanger with the pair still in mid-air and the show got cancelled.
  • In Star Trek Generations, Kirk twice has his horse dramatically jump over a ditch. This is most likely an excuse to show off William Shatner's truly exceptional equestrian skills.
  • Subverted Trope for laughs in True Lies: Arnold Schwarzenegger's character tries to follow the bad guy (who had made a motorcycle jump into a pool several stories down), but the horse balks and stops short, pitching Arnold off the saddle and almost to his death.
  • When Chev Chelios and his girlfriend Eve are having sex on the trackfield to create static electricity for his ensured living, a horse jumps over them and Eve and the viewers get to view a horse-dong.
  • Inverted Trope in an unknown Indian movie in which the hero slides his horse sideways under a truck. And then keeps riding.
  • Sonora Webster, the heroine of Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken, learns to dive horses off a high platform into a tank of water as a carnival attraction (see also the Atlantic City example in the Real Life section below; the high point of Sonora's career as a diving girl comes when she performs in Atlantic City).

Literature

  • People who attempt this in Tamora Pierce's Tortall Universe novels tend to end up badly. In the Alanna quartet, this brings about the demise of King Roald, although this is largely viewed as a suicide because of his grief at the death of his wife. In the Alianne duology, this is how Sarai and Dove's mother died, as revealed through Backstory.
  • In Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the most famous ravine jump happens to Liu Bei, who was riding a supposedly unlucky horse and trying to outrun some people out to kill him. The horse makes a tremendous leap to the top of the ravine overlooking the river he'd previously been stuck in, and Liu Bei's reinforcements finally show up.
  • Beatrice in Leonardos Swans.
  • In Royal Flash, Flashman gets into a crosscountry race with Otto von Bismarck that involves several horse jumps over hedges and ditches.
  • In The Silver Brumby in an odd way; Thowra makes it look like he's going to jump a ravine, but instead drops down to a small ledge on the cliff face. Arrow, who was chasing him at the time, attempts to jump the ravine and falls to his death.
  • Gone with the Wind makes a Tear Jerker out of a failed jump over a simple fence. Or actually two, one with Scarlett's father and one with her and Rhett's daughter.
  • In the final Time Scout book, Skeeter's horse jumps over a crashed wagon, but doesn't land well. In Wagers of Sin, Skeeter jumps a horse over a small shrine, exciting the arena's crowd. Then he takes it Up to Eleven by standing on the horse's back and using a spear to pole vault over the wall, a moment of Horseback Heroism.
  • In The Saddle Club, Veronica had been showing a disregard for the Stable Owner's instructions concerning jumping and ends up breaking her arm, and causing her horse to suffer a fatal injury after running her horse too fast downhill for the jump.

Radio

  • Subverted in The Goon Show: "Dishonoured" (and remake "Dishonoured Again"), in which Bluebottle's noble stallion throws him into the ravine, much to his disgust.

Tabletop Games

  • The Knight piece in Chess (which has the appearance of the knight's horse) is the only piece that can jump over other pieces.

Video Games

  • The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, with Link riding Epona and jumping the canyon in Gerudo Valley, and escaping the stables after beating Ingo.
  • In Wild ARMs 3, in order to get to areas on the map blocked by ravines, your party will need to get horses that will allow them to jump across.
  • This comes up at the climax of Shadow of the Colossus. Subversion - the horse doesn't make it. Or rather, he did make it, but the ground gave away when he landed.
    • Though the ending cutscene reveals the horse survived the fall.
    • It's also possible to do this over at least one broken land bridge towards the west end of the map, as well as off of smaller cliffs.
  • One of the "attacks" used by Wolfgunblood and Garopa from Alien Soldier. A set of high or low walls appear, and they will jump them if the walls are high. You gotta avoid the walls too or you'll take damage.
  • Steeplechase Redux is a game about jumping exactly over obstacles with your horse to gain speed and avoid the Advancing Wall of Doom.

Western Animation

  • In the Looney Tunes short "Buckaroo Bugs", a cowboy looking for Bugs Bunny jumps wider and wider gorges (thanks to the assistance of Bugs, who keeps shouting "He went this way") until he jumps over the Grand Canyon. He doesn't quite make that last one.
  • The climactic jump from Spirit, Stallion of the Cimmaron of course.
  • The obscure series The Silver Brumby had this four or five times.
  • My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic features this at times for some reason.
    • Applejack practices on a steeplechase-like course in 'The Last Roundup'.
    • Most of the cast effortlessly hop over a ravine while climbing mountains in 'Dragonshy', but Fluttershy balks. After much cajoling, she tries, panics, fails ... and just spans the gap, it being shorter than her outstretched legs.

Real Life

  • There are several sports devoted to just this, two of which are in the Olympics. These would be Eventing and Show Jumping. Additionally you have Hunters and Equitation, two ring-based equestrian events involving jumping obstacles, and Foxhunting, which takes place out in the field. Jumping into water and over ditches actually occurs in Eventing and some foxhunts. But it's also super dangerous, and Eventing in particular has come under recent scrutiny with its high death rates.
    • The death rates in eventing have mostly to do not with any inherent danger in jumping (steeplechasing in general has a LOWER fatality rate, at least for the horses, than flat racing, for example) than with, unlike show jumping and ring jumping, many obstacles being extremely solid, while the fences in show jumping or hunter classes are just balanced poles that fall easily when touched. The danger is not the water or ditches most of the time, but tables and heavy timber fences. Jumping a horse is actually not especially difficult or dangerous (this troper has her only-recently-ex racehorse jumping low oxers after nine months off the track); attempting to jump a VERY solid timber fence at high speed is a horse of a different color. If they hit the fence wrong, the horse does what's called a rotational fall, which often results in a broken back or shoulder for the horse (fatal injuries) and far too often a crushed rider when the rider's thrown forward and the horse falls on top of them. In show jumping, generally the worst that will happen if you hit a fence is you'll fall. Fox hunters always have the option of not jumping an obstacle, and as they're not being timed are not as much under pressure as eventers.
  • Atlantic City's Steel Pier once hosted an exhibition of Horse Diving, in which trained horses with female riders jumped off an elevated platform into a giant tank of water.


  1. I know. I thought it would be about jumping over horses too.