Totilas

The black stallion and his phenomenal scores lit up the dressage world. Alice Collins tracks his path to fame and the story behind his high-profile sale

- Alice Collins

FEW horses have owned the spotlight like the magnificent Totilas. Under Edward Gal, he set fire to the dressage scene with an almost 80% grand prix at their first international, when Totilas was just nine. They swept the board from summer 2009 to September 2010, winning everything there was to be won.

But unlike Britain’s sensation Valegro, Totilas didn’t seem to have all the hallmarks of greatness from the get-go. He didn’t dominate in young horse classes and was a busy, impatient young colt.

Totilas – named after a distant relative who survived a long trek at the end of World War II and helped found the Trakehner breed – was born in 2000 in the Netherlands. The Gribaldi son was a picture-book foal, jet black with four matching white socks.

His breeders Jan Schuil and Anna SchuilVisser gave him his basic education before asking local rider Jiska de Roos-van den Akker to take over when he was four. Totilas didn’t make the instant impression you might think.

“I saw him ridden and thought, ‘That’s not for me.’ He wasn’t much to look at and didn’t move that well,” recalls Jiska. “I wasn’t that enthusiastic about riding him; he seemed anxious and wasn’t very friendly. I know now that he just wanted to work, but at the time I thought he was misbehaving. But my husband, who knows a good horse, said that maybe he’d surprise me.”

So Totilas travelled to Jiska’s place three times a week for her to ride him. It didn’t take long for her to be persuaded.