Her Royal Highness Princess Anna visited the hippotherapy center in Moscow

13.02.2014 00:00

Her Royal Highness Princess Anna visited a training at the Chlidren Ecological Center “Zhivaya Nit”. The horsetimes journalist was one of the few accredited journalists by the British embassy.

The visit of Princess Anna to “Zhivaya Nit” happened in the framework of her visit of XXII Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. According to the press secretary of British embassy David Show Her Royal Highness regards sport development in Russia with trepidation especially during the cross cultural year between Russia and Great Britain.

The visit of Princess Anna started with observing foster children of the Center. Princess Anna accompanied by “Zhivaya Nit” and JCS “Russian Hippodromes” management she observed the arena where the planned training for two children was. After the training little ones fed horses with carrots and apples. Irina Terentyeva the Head of the Center told about the methods of work in “Zhivaya Nit” and her cooperation with the center for 20 years.

“Our activities depend a lot on the “Russian Hippodromes” support like extension of this room for free” - said Terentyeva.

At the moment about 80 children come to the Center weekly. All of them have different forms of derangements of motional, intellectual and neurosis systems. Most fed children of the Center have severe cerebral spastic infantile paralysis and Kanner's syndrome. According to Irina Terentyeva the amount of morbid events is increasing rapidly. However horses are able to rebuild the functioning of the immune system. She is convinced that hippotherapy is not mere words and shows astonishing results even after couple of trainings.

“We had a case of two children with autism. Their mother was uncertain during our phone call that the trainings could help because her children didn’t let her go. The children had different forms of autism. One had the more serious form than another. The one with more serious form has let her go on the first training already. The other one even went to school” - told Irina.

At the end of the visit Princess Anna made presents to children and listened to the stories coming to equestrian sport of Center coaches and representatives.

Princess Anna the daughter of Queen Elizabeth II was always very interested in equestrian sports. She participated in different tournaments and even won a gold medal and two silver medals of European Dressage Championship in 1971 and 1975. She was also the first representative of the Royal Family that took part in the Olympic Games in Monreal in 1976.

Princess daughter Zara Philipps followed in her mother’s footsteps and took part in the Olympic Games in London in 2012 and won a silver medal as a part of the National team.

Author: Maria Talanova