Edward Gal

Edward Gal

Edward Gal with Totilas
Medal record
Representing the  Netherlands
Equestrian
Olympic Games
	2012 London	Team dressage
World Championships
	2010 Lexington	Team dressage
	2010 Lexington	Special dressage
	2010 Lexington	Freestyle dressage
	2006 Aachen	Team dressage
	2014 Normandy	Team dressage
European Championships
	2009 Windsor	Team dressage
	2009 Windsor	Freestyle dressage
	2015 Aachen	Team dressage
	2005 Hagen	Team dressage
	2009 Windsor	Special dressage
	2013 Herning	Team dressage
	2011 Rotterdam	Team dressage
World Cup
	2010 Den Bosch	Individual dressage
	2004 Düsseldorf	Individual dressage
	2005 Las Vegas	Individual dressage
	2015 Las Vegas	Individual dressage
	2014 Lyon	Individual dressage

Edward Gal (born 4 March 1970 in Rheden) is a Dutch dressage rider. He and the stallion Totilas (nicknamed "Toto"), were triple gold medalists at the 2010 FEI World Equestrian Games, becoming the first horse-rider partnership ever to sweep the three available dressage gold medals at a single FEI World Games. Going into the 2010 Games, they had amassed multiple world-record scores in international competition, leading one American journalist to call them "rock stars in the horse world". After the World Equestrian Games, Totilas was sold to German trainer Paul Schockemöhle. Gal continues to be successful training and competing dressage horses at the international level.

Gal began his equestrian career as a jumper at age 14, beginning with ponies and graduating to larger horses at age 20. However, when he discovered his horse did not like jumping, he switched to dressage. While enjoying solid success in national and international competition, he did not become a truly dominant rider until he began competing with Totilas in 2008. Gal would later say that he and his team understood that Totilas was a special horse after their first Grand Prix competition.

At the time, Gal replaced his countrywoman Anky van Grunsven as the dominant rider on the world dressage circuit. In July 2009, Gal and Totilas broke van Grunsven's world record score in Grand Prix Freestyle with an 89.50% mark at Hickstead, England, and shortly thereafter followed it up with another record score of 90.75% in the same discipline at that year's European Championships. In December 2009, at the fourth leg of the 2009–10 FEI World Cup Dressage series at Olympia in London, they extended their record in GP Freestyle to 92.30%, more than 10 points above the second-place finisher. While not setting a world record, they easily won that season's FEI World Cup final in GP Freestyle at home in the Netherlands, winning by more than 7 points with a score better than their first world record. The pair also had a world-record score in the Grand Prix Special discipline to their credit, having recorded 86.460% at Aachen in July 2010.

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