Dressage riders are constantly pursuing perfection in their sport, most of them well aware that they will never achieve it. Last weekend at the 2009 FEI European Championships, one Dutch horse and rider team came closer than anyone ever has before.
Edward Gal rode his KWPN Stallion, Moorlands Totilas, to an unprecedented 90.7 in the Freestyle held at Windsor Castle in England. The pair broke their own record, an 89.4 from the Exquis Dressage Masters at Hickstead, England, in July of this year.
The performance was marked by Totilas’ flashy, high-stepping piaffe and extended trot. The stunning black 9-year-old, who goes by the barn name Toto, was approved as a KWPN (Dutch) breeding stallion after winning silver in the Grand Prix Special at Windsor.
Gal previously trained with another Dutch dressage legend, Anky Van Grunsven, and has surpassed her several times in recent competitions. Besides this year’s European Championships, Gal also won all three tests at the Dutch championships in June of this year while Van Grunsven came in second.
For her part, Van Grunsven earned bronze in the Freestyle at the European Championships while Adelinde Cornelissen earned the silver, giving the team from the Netherlands a dressage medal sweep.
Watch Edward Gal and Moorland Totilas’ record-breaking performance:
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So beautiful. They brought tears to my eyes.
Thank you for this wonderful article.
This is awesome
cool!
All I can say is…..WOW!!!!
breathtaking single tempe’s, he looks as if he’s on a trampoline! i like where the announcer says, “he almost has to be careful he doesn’t knock his teeth with his knees!”
Nothing short of BREATHTAKING.
What a joy and privilege to watch
That is AMAZING!
so beautiful!
love it!!!!!
WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, and I almost missed this. I wasn’t going to stop by the main page today but then I thought I’d better see. It might something good. Simply amazing. And thank you so much for putting the video on here. As I was reading the article I was already planning on how to see it. Now I’ve seen it 4 times and shared it with my friends.
We filmed Edward’s performance at the Hickstead World Dressage Masters a few weeks before the Europeans. Here it is with a fabulous interview at the start…
http://www.horsehero.com/5201/25496/24908
incredible but better take a closer look at those changes……had to be a “5” or lower on the single tempis
great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! holy crap!!!!
Yes, a lovely moving horse. BUT what has happened to the FEI Dressage rules? Why a 10 for a passage which did not have the poll as the highest point? Why such good marks for submission, when the tempis had big mistakes?
Please judges mark for correctness of training not the flashiest paces !!