Thursday, July 10, 2008

Two grey liberty acts--Which one puts the equestrian arts of the Circus in the highest standards. Assuming the public doesn't care


12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whew, those Togni horses give me goosebumps. I'm wondering though how the trainer is in that position for the wheel without getting run over.

Ian

Anonymous said...

The ten white horses are gorgeous

Anonymous said...

Ian - me too.

Wade - what are we missing here?

Wade G. Burck said...

Steve and Ian,
The training over there is much slower and more precise. There is not much running or stampeding of the animals. The have just finished threading the needle, and he is shaping them up for the rear. This is the Lidia Togni show, not Flavio Togni who has the American Circus, I think. There are a lot of shows who have the same name over there, and it gets confusing sometimes.
Wade

Anonymous said...

Wade, I was reading up on the Lydia Tognia site that in addition to the greys, he also has 12 black Sanfratellani horses from Sicilly. These are apparently very rare and it was quite a feat to assemble 12 matched horses since they vary from various shades of Bay to black. I fact he found 3 of them at a slaughterhouse. The Lydia Togni Circus carries 50 horses in total. Man, I'd love to take a trip to europe to see some of those acts.

Ian

Anonymous said...

I read once that Mary Chipperfield once took 18 months just to get a group of grey arabs together of mtching size and conformation. I guess they don't breed grey Arabs like flies the way they do over here.
In the 70's the breed association was holding special shows just for geldings to encourage Arab owners to geld. There were so many studs that the stud prices had plummetted. It was a huge fad for the uber rich celebs to have an Arab breeding facility.

Ian

Wade G. Burck said...

Ian,
The gentleman with the greys is Enis Togni. I believe Flavio Tognis father. I trust John Cooper will correct if I am wrong. Some of the most beautiful horse's and horse acts America has seen in recent times, was when the Tognis brought their horses here on Ringling. Rumor always was that Kenneth Feld tried to buy all of it when they wanted to go home after 2 years.
There are also varing shades of grey in Arabians. If I remember, the act Mary put together were all steel gray dappled. Very beautiful with baby blue plumes. I think she was attempting to match her high school horse, Pedro.
When Cass Ole hit the screen everybody wanted a Black Stallion. I used to tell people to invest in black testicles. It seemed they were so valuable nobody wanted to get rid of them. And only about 6% of the colts out there at the time, deserved to keep them.
Wade

Anonymous said...

Wade, Vinicio Togni has the horse numbers on Circo Lydia Togni. He's 40, so might be a brother of Flavio?

Ian

Wade G. Burck said...

Ian,
Thank you. Maybe Enis is a nickname for Venicio. I remember one of Flavios sisters was very nice looking. I will see if I have a picture of her someplace.
Wade

Anonymous said...

Wade - I'm still missing something here.

The horses to the presenter's right appear to me to be striding out much too far to be preparing to rear.

Wade G. Burck said...

Steve,
They have taken the 5 blacks out, and the 5 on the right are moving over, and the one on the far left(the leader) looks like he is sucking back or being shoved by the 2 horse. When the leader is up they do the hind leg stand.
Wade

Anonymous said...

Here's an interesting piece from the New York Times of March 1990.
If you read the last paragraph, you can see how times have changed.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE2D61E3AF93AA15750C0A966958260

Ian