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Featured Video: A Horse in the City

If you were the kind of kid (or adult) who imagined riding a horse everywhere you went, you’ll appreciate this new commercial from Hermès. In real life, you’d never canter a horse through the middle of city streets, over cobblestones, and up stairs. But thanks to some movie magic, you can see what it would be like if a horse and rider did race through the heart of Paris.



In the one-minute ad, French show jumper Simon Delestre rides a stunning black horse through the city, jumping such urban obstacles as chairs in the park and motorcycles parked on the side of the road. It’s a beautiful bit of equestrian parkour that will take you back to those days of imagining riding a majestic steed of your own through the world.



The ad was created by French agency AM-PM and the horse was provided by Mario Luraschi, an Italian trainer who specializes in training horses for film and equestrian theater.

Leslie Potter

Leslie Potter is a graduate of William Woods University where she earned a Bachelor of Science in Equestrian Science with a concentration in saddle seat riding and a minor in Journalism/Mass Communications. She is currently a writer and photographer in Lexington, Ky. Potter worked as a barn manager and riding instructor and was a freelance reporter and photographer for the Horsemen's Yankee Pedlar and Saddle Horse Report before moving to Lexington to join Horse Illustrated as Web Editor from 2008 to 2019. Her current equestrian pursuits include being a grown-up lesson kid at an eventing barn and trail riding with her senior Morgan gelding, Snoopy.

View Comments

  • WOW, awesome rider and beautiful horse! Glad that it's all about movie magic and not really doing those crazy things on pavers or in town! But still an awesome presentation!

  • Would have loved to have seen the original jump course that this all came from. Beautiful horse and rider!

  • Neat commercial! Glad it wasn't really filmed being ridden on the hard unsafe ground and roads! Beautiful horse!

  • Pretty cool, but yep, glad it's all about trick photography and not a horse really galloping and jumping on pavers and roads!

  • WOW beautiful horse and glad that it's all done with trick photography, hate to see his legs ruined running and jumping on the road like that!

  • WOW, glad that was all cinama-photography and they weren't doing that in streets or on hard pavement! But pretty neat for sure!

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