Dressage record horse: the wonderful stallion Totilas dies

mer was a four-legged superstar and the world’s most expensive dressage horse: stallion Totilas, who died on Tuesday at age 20 of complications from colic, has died, as confirmed by Paul Schockemöhle. “That’s a big loss,” said the horse dealer who brought the stallion from Holland to Germany ten years ago for an estimated € 10 million. Former Totilas rider Matthias Alexander Rath wrote on Instagram: “We will miss you incredibly and never forget you!”

In his career, Totilas was more astonished and admired than any other dressage horse before him. When Schockemöhle unveiled it in Germany in the fall of 2010, there was a huge media hype about the handsome black boy and alleged gold guarantor. “There has never been as much publicity as him,” Schockemöhle said recently, looking back at the spectacular transfer. “They were all tied up by the horse,” said Dennis Peiler, director of sports for the German equestrian association FN.

Suddenly there was a great interest in dressage. To this contributed the utopian sum until then and the appearances of the stallion who had ascended to wonder horse with his Dutch rider Edward Gal. At the 2010 World Cup, a few months before it went on sale, Totilas and Gal won gold three times in Lexington, USA. Gal was able to make the stallion dance. They received world record ratings multiple times in their joint career.

Rath could not live up to the huge expectations. The pressure for him was immense, also driven by a public relations machine. Totilas was the star, his rider was not. On the lack of gold at the Euro, the World Cup and the Olympics, Schockemöhle said in October this year: “That was a health problem.”

Totilas had failed over and over again. There were always comebacks. The sad end came in 2015 at the European Championships in Aachen, where the horse was withdrawn from individual competitions due to bone edema. The fact that the sick stallion had previously competed in the teams was often criticized.

Most recently, Totilas was at the sheep farm in Kronberg im Taunus with Rath and his family. The stallion was used in breeding for many years. “He was good in the stud race,” Schockemöhle said Tuesday night. The descendants of Totilas are in great demand.