Prime Minister Viktor Orbán officially opened the refurbished National Riding School in Budapest on Saturday.
He announced that the National Riding School will provide training facilities for competitive riders. “We love Hungary, we love our culture, and therefore we also love our horses,” he declared.
The prime minister remarked that an exemplary civic initiative successfully rescued the existing riding school from irretrievable disrepair, enabling the government to refurbish it within a budget of 3.2 billion HUF. He said that Hungary’s equestrian community has ensured two things: that as a nation the Hungarian people have retained their equestrian spirit; and that the National Riding School – which was founded 140 years ago this year – was saved from attempts to “bulldoze” it, even though in 2006 it seemed that “not one stone would be left on another”.
PM Orbán said that the past few years have shown that when the government and the equestrian community entered into an alliance they “bet on the right horse”. The prime minister also noted that while nowadays horses are less visible in our daily lives, the old rule still applies: one’s honor is measured by how one treats one’s horses.