The five gaits of the icelandic horse | Hacker News Reader

The five gaits of the icelandic horse

islandshestar.is

22 pointsthunderbong13 comments

The tolt gait is shared by a couple other breeds and is identical in beat to the rack gait of the American Saddlebred horse, but differs in appearance.

There are six gait categories. Walk, trot, amble, canter, gallop, and pace. The tolt is a form of amble and the flying pace is a pace.

Many breeds of cart horse have a pace gait, the Icelandic is unique in having a pace gait that you can ride, most/all others have too much side to side motion to ride.

Horses from non "gaited" (having more than the four primary gaits) breeds can be taught other gaits, notably the Morgan is very good at picking up a pace.

For those wanting to see it in action [0].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV9P0w8vZi8

The Flying Pace looks like… ‘running’? Almost cartoonish.

Very smooth though.

Tenessee Walkers also have the five gaits. You might know them from western movies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-gaited

Not exactly "the five" but a different set of five gaits.

Can you example the difference? I’ve seen Tennessee Walkers before and ridden them and it’s a trip, but I don’t understand how they differ from the Icelandic horse.

Honestly I had just learned this distiction as well and its not entirely clear to me not being too much of a horse person. Here a slightly edited explanation from the linked wiki:

American Saddlebred - walk, trot, canter, and two ambling gaits: the rack, a fast, lateral, four-beat gait that is synchronous— "each foot meets the ground at equal, separate intervals"; and a "slow gait", a slower, smooth collected four-beat gait that is asynchronous — "the lateral front and hind feet start almost together but the hind foot contacts the ground slightly before its lateral forefoot."

Icelandic horse - walk, trot, canter, tölt and the skeið, or flying pace. The tölt is a lateral four-beat gait compared to the rack of the Saddlebred, but in style of performance sometimes more closely resembles the largo of the Paso Fino, or the running walk of the Tennessee Walking Horse. Like all lateral ambling gaits, the footfall pattern is the same as the walk (left hind, left front, right hind, right front), but differs from the walk in that it can be performed at a range of speeds, from the speed of a typical fast walk up to the speed of a normal canter. Some Icelandic horses prefer to tölt, while others prefer to trot. The flying pace is a two-beat lateral gait, with a moment of suspension between the two sets of footfalls.

So it seems they share the first three then the Icelandic tölt is similar to the Saddlebred rack and the fifth seems completely different - the Icelandic skeið being a two-beat lateral with the Saddlebred performing a four-beat asynchronous amble.

Wow. That’s more of an explanation than I ever hoped for. Thank you.

I really think I’ve got to pull these up side-by-side on YouTube and see what’s up. I get the description but I didn’t even realize there were forms of horse locomotion that were unknown to me. That’s crazy.

I guess as two legged creatures we don't really think much about how walking works, esp with more les.

We have walk, run, jog but those all are just one leg in front of the other. I guess we do have some unusual gaits with skipping and such.

It's obvious four legs give you more patterns to work with.

I just didn't realize that for horses this was a genetic thing or that the three common gaits were unique patterns/footfalls in the first place.

I've got one of them, he's pretty nice.

My problem with icelanders is that they also EAT horses.

So what?

A lot of cultures eat horse. They're good eating.

I’m gonna puke.

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