“Never take part in a poney race on thin ice. It’s just not the smartest thing to do”
and wasn’t intentional either; the ice is monitored very heavily before any sort of event (just just horses but other sports each year all over iceland). was recorded to be thick enough to be safe in all areas, but had a path measured out over the best areas.

I’d disagree with the comment about animal cruelty; security and ice training has been historically and still is a fairly major part of training in iceland. You sort of need it in a country with such a large amount of glaciers and open upland grazing! Although obviously as in competition rather than out at grass they’d have had ice studs on etc.

I’d also doubt that anyone found it a “funny experience” to say the least. even though natural selection and the environment has produced such a tough and used-to-bloody-freezing conditions (among which swimming frozen rivers is not unheard of safely) there was still a large amount of hypothermia concern afterwards. Hence why heatlamps etc. were used on all people and horses involved. so to suggest that anyone involved found it at all funny is frankly incredibly insulting.

so bad luck, but also fairly goodluck that it happened in the middle of Reykjavík rather than any number of icetölt events all over during the winter each year. And incredibly unlikely accident really given the numbers that take place and have done for years without fault!

p.s. icelandics are horses and you eyes are likely to be gouged out with a rusty nail for refering to them as ponies or “poneys”