Someone just sent this link to another list. http://www.wdr.de/tv/sport_live/videos/flashplayer.jsp?mid=10208
Here are 80 Icelandic's doing a demo at a national level jumping show in Germany. By looking at the flags, I gather they are from different countries. Supposedly, these are mostly "average" riders, most are not show riders. It looks like some of the horses are gaiting, some are trotting, and most look pretty relaxed, so the pattern works well. I even saw a couple of riders posting. I saw an occasional bobble in the pattern...but my goodness, that's a lot of horses! They don't show many close-ups of the riders, but the ones I saw seemed to have the saddles in a respectable spot. I can't see details like bits and nosebands, but if you can get this many horses going with relatively even spacing, with all those flags, with that many horses looking relaxed, I'd say that's a big accomplishment. I think it's impressive to see this many horses going so pleasantly - maybe it's because they went for a relatively simple pattern, at slow-medium speeds, rather than pushing speed at the expense of precision and horsemanship. Karen Thomas, NC
