Air Horse One: How Horses Get Transported to the Paris Olympics
The 2024 Olympics saw not just athletes but also their equine counterparts, some of the finest horses from around the world, traveling to Paris to compete at the highest level.
Equestrian events for the Olympics consist of three categories:
- Dressage: Freestyle where the rider and horse will perform to music
- Jumping: A course where the horses will have to jump through obstacles such as hurdles, water jumps, and stone walls
- Eventing: a combination of dressage, jumping, and cross country
With over 300 horse-rider combinations from all over the world competing for a title at the Olympics, a lot of transportation logistics is involved to ensure both the athletes and their horses make it safely to their destination. Horses must go through multiple health checks, microchipping and even obtain their own passport prior to the flight. An average roundtrip can go up to $30,000 per horse.
Planning takes place months ahead to coordinate the transportation of 1,200-pound loads of animals overseas. The Dutta Corporation, a company specializing in equestrian transport, was responsible for flying Team USA’s horse athletes to Versailles. Most of Team USA’s horses this year were transported on Cargolux 747 freighters, which have a maximum capacity of up to 90 horses.
For 747 freighters, the cargo area is loaded up with 112 centimeter-wide stalls lined up per row, fitting 2-3 horses per stall. In order to minimize any agitation between the horses, the stallions are loaded at the front of the plane to not get distracted by the mares. The photo below is an example of how the racehorses are lined up in the cargo area.
In past collaboration with Cargolux, Pacmin created a 1:40 scale cutaway of a Cargolux 747-8F, which demonstrates the cargo-loading process. Cargolux transports around 3,000 racehorses per year.
Sources
- Equine royalty takes flight: How U.S. horses got to and from the Paris Olympics. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5689013/2024/08/09/us-equestrian-horse-airplane-paris-olympics/
- Noah’s Ark of the Skies. Cargolux. https://www.cargolux.com/media/002drv01/cargolux-brochure-cv-alive.pdf
- How Horses Travel by Air to the Olympics in Versailles. The Horse. https://thehorse.com/1129370/how-horses-travel-by-air-to-the-olympics-in-versailles/
About Pacmin Studios
Pacmin Studios has been serving the aviation and transportation industries with creative physical and digital models and exhibits since 1946.
Known for producing high quality custom aircraft display models, Pacmin Studios has evolved to provide a suite of additional services, including graphic design, CAD, CGI rendering and animation, livery design, and other transportation marketing solutions.
