On our tour to Michigan we were so lucky to be invited to be a part of a research project at the McPhail Equine Performance Center, at the Michigan State University.

We took 4 top quality Icelandic horses to the Center to collect data for gait analyses. The gait was of course: Tolt

Head of the research is Dr. Hilary Clayton, McPhail Dressage Chair in Equine Sports Medicine, and with her were David Mullineaux, PhD, some students and professors from the Ohio State University.

The horses did great.  Two of them broke a “world record” in speed, reaching the fastest recorded speed in the runway any breed has reached at any gait. As so often the Icelandic horse proved that “bigger” does not always mean “better”- or faster.

Much of good data was collected and we wait with excitement to see the results. As you can see on the photos here, McPhail has great equipment to do gait analyses.

Here is what came out of the research we took part in:

BIKNEVICIUS, A.R.*; MULLINEAUX, D.R.; CLAYTON, H.M.; Ohio Univ.; Michigan State Univ.; Michigan State Univ.: Taking the walk for a run: Locomotor mechanics of lateral sequence singlefoot gaits.

The locomotor mechanics of lateral sequence singlefoot gaits were investigated. Icelandic horses using a walk and a tölt, often described as a "running walk", were ridden to record ground reaction forces (GRF) and limb kinematics. Icelandic horses smoothly transition from a walk to a tölt, while faithfully remaining within the limb phase range characteristic of lateral sequence singlefoot gaits (15-35%). GRFs for fore and hind limbs for the tölt were found to more closely resemble force profiles of running trots than walks. Individual limb GRFs were summed, to represent whole body GRFs, and integrated to obtain velocity and displacements of the center of mass for computation of kinetic and gravitation potential energies. All trials, including the fastest tölt at 4.7 m/s, resulted in at least one limb maintaining ground contact throughout the stride. As the kinetic and gravitational potential energies cycled largely in-phase during the tölt, the energy recovery by pendular mechanisms was limited. These findings reinforce the concept that aerial phases are not necessary for running mechanics. The results of this study provide insight into the mechanics of the other gaits and species, such as, the elephant which exclusively relies on lateral sequence single-footed runs for its fastest locomotion. (Supported by NSF 0080158 and McPhail endowment