PrintFamous Horses, Part 2
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TJ and Viggo in Hidalgo
HIDALGO(Just call him TJ)
Frank T. Hopkins may have faced a 3,000-mile survival race called the Ocean of Fire across the Arabian Desert on his mustang Hidalgo, but actor Viggo Mortensen got his own Ocean of Fire on the night Hidalgo premiered in Hollywood and he arrived aboard the American Paint Horse stallion RH Tecontender (TJ). Hollywood horse trainer Rex Peterson, who trained TJ and four more paint horses for the part of Hidalgo, remembers the night. It had been raining when Mortensen's limo pulled up to where the horse trailer was parked on a side street, and Mortensen climbed aboard the sorrel and white overo paint horse TJ for a ride. Unlike the movie, in which Mortensen, starring as Hopkins, got as many takes as it took, this time there would be no take two.
"I got in front of [TJ and Viggo] and they had three bodyguards," Peterson says. "We rounded that corner onto Hollywood Boulevard and all the flashes went off. You can't imagine! It blinded me. TJ froze for a second. I just said, 'TJ, here!' and he trotted ... right up behind me with Viggo on him, and we just kept jogging up the street [to the theater]. I knew if we stopped he was going to get mobbed. We had women throwing undergarments at Viggo. It was unbelievable!" Picked for his looks, TJ, a former breeding stallion, proved his mettle on the film set, notably in the starting line for the race scene with 120 other stallions. "If you'd had the wrong stud, you'd have been in trouble. He was the right horse." Peterson still owns RJ Masterbug (RJ), the number 2 Hidalgo horse. As for TJ, he went home with Mortensen. Like the characters they played - Hopkins and Hidalgo - they developed an extraordinary bond. www.swansonpetersonproductions.com.
Traveler rallies the faithful before a big game.
TRAVELER 7
At the University of Southern California in downtown Los Angeles, football is serious business. Each time the USC Trojans make a touchdown, a pure Spanish Andalusian horse named Traveler thunders down the sidelines with "Tommy Trojan" aboard, looking like they leaped out of Ben-Hur.
"It's been going on 49 years and they've only had seven horses," says Joanne Asman, who owns and trains Traveler 7, an 18-year-old white (technically gray) gelding who was a multinational champion before assuming the role and responsibilities of the sacred tradition. "We usually start eight hours before the game. If it's a 12:30 p.m. game, I'm starting at 4 o'clock in the morning," explains Asman. "On a regular day, we're at the stadium four hours before the game. Our trailer is parked outside Gate 11, which is right outside the tunnel where the teams go."
They have to get there early because there's a lot to do. "We take him down on the field about three hours before the game and do a walk-through in case anything has changed from the previous game," Asman says. "About an hour before the game we follow the full band — 350 pieces — into the tunnel where we stay during the game." Besides touchdown sprints, Traveler appears between the third and fourth quarters of the game. On any given day, 2,000 to 3,000 football fans stop by to greet the horse for good luck before entering the stadium. "He doesn't go anywhere that I don't go," says Asman, who flew with Traveler 7 to Florida when USC went to the Orange Bowl.
The idea for the current mascot began in 1961 when Bob Jani, then USC director of special events, and Eddie Tannenbaum, then a junior at USC, watched Richard Saukko ride his horse Traveler in the Rose Parade. Jani and Tannenbaum persuaded Saukko to ride Traveler during USC games as a mascot. To date, there have been seven Travelers and seven Tommy Trojans. Hector Aguilar is the current rider, and Traveler 7 is starting his eighth year on the job. "He thinks 32,000 people are there to see him," says Asman. "Only when he is working for USC is he allowed to be called Traveler." Known as Tuno IV when he's not Traveler for USC, Asman's gelding has appeared on the cover of Vogue magazine with Salma Hayek and been ridden by several celebrities, including LeAnn Rimes. "Tuno will retire when he tells us he wants to," Asman says. "We'll know." Meanwhile, the future Traveler is in the wings. Asman's been readying another pure Spanish Andalusian, Incognito SA, for his debut when the day arrives.www.asmanj.com.
TEMPLADO (1985 - 2008)
When the equestrian spectacle Cavalia first arrived in the United States from Canada in 2004, the charismatic Lusitano stallion Templado captivated thousands from the second his larger-than-life image was projected inside the mammoth big top like a mystical equine guide. A presence as dramatic as his massive swirling mane, which nearly touched the ground, Templado left no doubts that he was the star at liberty in a stunning act featuring three loose stallions and the great "horse whisperer" Frédéric Pignon (Cavalia's founding costar). Witnessing the extraordinary bond between Templado and Pignon moved many audience members to tears.
A horse of mythical proportions, Templado debuted in 1993 at the annual Crinires d'Or (Golden Manes) show in Avignon, France. He left Europe for Canada with owners Pignon and Magali Delgado when they collaborated with Cirque du Soleil cofounder Normand Latourelle to develop Cavalia. With their impressive stallion, Pignon and Delgado became the show's founding costars and performed with it from 2004 until they "retired" from Cavalia in 2009 and returned to France. Bred on the Delgado family's Lusitano horse farm in the south of France, Templado was sold as a yearling but came back at 3 as a rebellious stallion with monumental challenges. In their 2009 book Gallop to Freedom (Trafalgar Square Books), Delgado and Pignon credit working with Templado with changing their way of thinking and laying the foundation for a new approach to horse training. "When I started to work with Templado, I understood that he was very special," says Pignon, who is now working on new equestrian projects in France. "He was one of those horses who make you understand that every horse is very unique. There is no rule. There are no mathematical ways to understand a horse. ... [Templado] was not like the hundreds of horses I worked with before. ... He made me understand that when we work with a horse, we have to adapt ourselves and even adapt everything we've learned [before]." In that process, Pignon says, Templado opened his mind. "When you work with a horse," he explains, "I think it's important to realize that he could probably teach you much more than you already know."
Templado's death in 2008 on the Delgado family farm prompted fan tributes on YouTube.com and sympathy letters from around the world. www.pignon-delgado.com.
Read the "Famous Horses" feature from the July 2010 issue of C&I.
