Saddle Saddle The saddle is a supportive structure for a rider or other load, fastened to an animal's back by a girth. The most common type is the equestrian saddle designed for a horse. However, specialized saddles have been created for oxen, camels and other creatures. It is not known precisely when riders first began to use some sort of padding or protection, but a blanket attached by some form of surcingle or girth was probably the first "saddle", followed later by more elaborate padded designs. The solid saddle tree was a later invention, and though early stirrup designs predated the
Girth (functional analysis) Girth (functional analysis) In functional analysis, the girth of a Banach space is the infimum of lengths of centrally symmetric simple closed curves in the unit sphere of the space. Equivalently, it is twice the infimum of distances between opposite points of the sphere, as measured within the sphere. Every finite-dimensional Banach space has a pair of opposite points on the unit sphere that achieves the minimum distance, and a centrally symmetric simple closed curve that achieves the minimum length. However, such a curve may not always exist in infinite-dimensional spaces. The girth is always at least four, because the