March 2006

This has been a good month for Elli and Berglind. Elli won the winter tolt games at Horse club Hörður, professional class on the stallion Fontur and Berglind won the women’s group on stallion Klerkur. The later this month Elli won the same class again on the wonderful Lokkur.

Elli competed at Landsmot on the fantastic stallion Stigandi from Leysingastadir owned by Martina Gates in NY-USA. The pair did great and Stigandi was a real eye catcher. Martina did a great video about Stigandi- you can watch it by clicking at the link here below

The US-Icetolt Champion 2003

Elli was a member in the Great Icelandic Horse Fair adventure tour last fall. He did not just participate in all the Icetolt competitions, he won them all on the great stallion Frami from Ragnheiðarstöðum and became the first US-Icetolt Champion.

Elli trained Frami and he became on of the 10 highest-ranking stallions in Iceland in the year 2003. Prior to the tour Elli sold Frami to Morgan Venable in CA-USA.

World record holder

It can truly be said that Elli is an unofficial World record holder. On the tour last fall the TGIHF-group visited Michigan State University and the McPhail Equine Performance Center. The purpose of the visit was among others was that the Center wanted to do some studies on the gait Icelandic horses are most famous for, the tolt.

We won’t go into details of the studies, but one of the things the professors found out was that the Icelandic horse could reach great speed at a very short distance, more speed then they had ever recorded before. Elli riding stallion Frami managed to reach the speed of 7,3 meters per second in the runway the tests were done. This was almost twice the speed that had been recorded before on other breeds. The professors at the Equine Center said that the speed Elli and Frami reached was a “world record” by their books any way- the acceleration the Icelandic horse has is amazing