Throughout his life, Fredric has followed his own path, taken risks and tested limits to reach his goals. Follow Fredric's exciting life story in this 2021 profile by Carin Wrange at HästSverige
How horses move and interact with surfaces has been an important area of research since the 1970s. One of the pioneers and a leading researcher is Professor Ingvar "Fredric" Fredricson.
Meet Ingvar 'Fredric' Fredricson, profiled at HästSverige. The text was published in November 2021.
A common thread in Fredric's life has been his great interest in various ways of trying to prevent injuries in horses because he believes that durability is the most important characteristic of all horses.
Already in the 1960s, Fredric had decided to become a researcher in horse biomechanics, despite the fact that horses were hardly on the agenda in veterinary education at the time. But with a clear goal and strong will, he managed to get funding to film high-speed trotting horses at full speed.
How horses' legs move and how hooves land on the surface was the start of a research area that in the 1970s resulted in sloping racetracks, among other things. Today, the research area has grown and includes a large number of different work areas with a focus on horse biomechanics. It is, for example, about the importance of footing for performance and durability and about new objective methods for diagnosing movement disorders and lameness in horses.
At the age of 84, Fredric still has an impressive drive. His desire to start new projects remains, despite his age. The latest is that he is now writing his memoirs!
– It will be a thick book that contains almost everything I have experienced with horses over 80 years, he says.
Durability is the most important characteristic of horses.
Although Fredric grew up in central Malmö in the early years, he was determined early on to live and work with horses
– I already made that decision as a 4-year-old when I saw the sweepers' horse-drawn cart driving down the street below our house.
There was no horse tradition in the Fredricson family, but his parents understood and respected their son's decision to start riding at Malmö riding school at the age of 12. However, the son had to pay for the riding lessons himself and he worked as an errand boy after the school day to earn the money.
– Sometimes I only had money for half an hour of riding, but it was better than nothing.
Fredric continued to ride at the riding school throughout his school years and the dream of working with horses was always there. After matriculation, he applied to K4, the cavalry in Umeå. During those years there were major changes in the military and the horses were about to disappear from the cavalry at the same time as the number of horses in the country decreased radically and reached a low level in the 1970s.
– I wasn't particularly interested in becoming a cavalry officer when the horses on K4 were soon to be replaced by wagons and the regiment was likely to be moved to Arvidsjaur. That's why I left after fifteen months, he says.
Fredric then had his sights set on veterinary school in Stockholm. After completing his high school studies, in the fall of 1960 he succeeded in being admitted to the Royal Veterinary College (Stutis) in Stockholm. At that time, 30 students per year were admitted. To Fredric's disappointment, there was almost no focus at all on horses, but all the more on farm animals. It was only during the third academic year that horses were on the schedule.
Fredric had realized early on that the human eye has too poor a time resolution for safe assessment of lameness and movement asymmetries. In his third year at Stutis, Fredric therefore contacted researchers at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) to get help with high-speed photography of trotting horses at Solvalla.
– I begged money from various sources, including from Professor Åkerblom, one of the teachers at "Stutis", in order to rent a high-speed camera.
The unique studies began with Fredric and Gunnar Lenning, one of the researchers at KTH, filming trotting horses at Solvalla both from the front and from the side via a car that was driven along the course. At that time, no Swedish trotting tracks were sloped and the horses often galloped in the curves. Being able to see the movements of the trotters twenty times slower than in reality aroused great interest among trainers and drivers. But for research, the films must be analyzed quantitatively.
Fredric therefore contacted researchers from SAAB in Linköping. There they had developed one of the world's first computerized analysis programs for determining the landing stability of the aircraft wing during hard landings.
– Two of Saab's researchers helped me voluntarily, because money for specifically horse research was not even on the map at the time.
Almost every weekend, the researchers from SAAB came to the home of Fredric and his wife Stina in Södertälje to develop the technology needed to be able to analyze the movement patterns of the horse's hooves.
After a lot of development work and "invention", Fredric was able to present his doctoral thesis Equine joint kinematics and co-ordination in 1972, and thus Swedish biomechanical horse research was born.
I Fredric's research group at SLU also included veterinarians Stig Drevemo and Göran Dalin. They all realized that large research grants were required for biomechanical research to survive. Although the research showed a great need for, among other things, improved geometric design of trotting tracks with transition curves and more sloped curves, it was not an easy task to convince equestrian organizations of the need to change racetracks.
Fredric persistently sought support and funding both in Sweden and abroad, but was rejected. It was only when he got in touch with Don Price, legendary trotting trainer and horse owner in the USA, that the situation turned around. A five-year research grant became a reality when four North American trotting organizations came together to fund it.
In 1974, Stutis moved to Uppsala and eventually became part of the Swedish University of Agriculture (SLU). The move meant that biomechanical research suddenly received large grants for a treadmill where horses could be filmed indoors at 50 km/h both uphill and downhill and on sideways surfaces. In addition, they received a grant to develop a computerized film analysis program.
The biomechanics group was the first at SLU to use its own minicomputer. The technology would greatly improve the possibilities for research into the movements of horses.
– If Stutis had not been moved to Uppsala, we would never have been able to obtain the large grants needed to develop a movement laboratory for horses, and had we not received research grants from the USA and Canada, we would have stopped our research before then, Fredric states.
– Together with the Department of Road Construction at KTH, we had developed a computer program for the ergonomic (=friendly to the horse's body) design of trotting tracks. However, the Swedish Trotting Federation was completely unwilling to even discuss the pros and cons of modifying their trotting tracks, says Fredric.
The first trotting track in the world to be built with transition curves and a nine-degree incline in the curves therefore became the Amager-Skobo track on Zealand in Denmark in the mid-1970s. It was such a success that Swedish racetracks quickly began to be rebuilt according to the scientists' drawings. The first Swedish track to be rebuilt was Färjestad in Karlstad in 1977. Shortly thereafter, all other tracks in Sweden and, in also in many plaabroad were changed.
In the early 1980s, Fredric decided that it was time to leave the biomechanical research at SLU to his colleagues. He wanted to do something completely different and was then hired by AB Trav och Galopp (ATG) to half-time lead a large young horse project where researchers at SLU would study the pros and cons of early training of trotting horses. In the second half, he worked as a clinic veterinarian at the ATG clinic at Skrubb's racetrack.
I wanted to get hold of good jumping stallions for the Swedish breeding, that was priority 1 for me.
-Then suddenly a dream job appeared, at least for me as a veterinarian interested in horses. A manager and stud veterinarian was sought for the newly formed foundation, Swedens Breeding and Equestrian Sports Center at Flyinge, which would privatize the state's defunct stallion depot and stud farm.
Fredric got both posts in competition with 41 applicants and in March 1983 the moving truck went down to Flyinge for the whole Fredricson family. At Flyinge there was a great need for renovation and changes and Fredric made sure to speed up the business. During the 15 years that he was manager, both new riding arenas and stables were built and talented riders and trainers were hired. Several courses were started to meet a growing need for courses about horses.
Fredric also initiated research and development work in reproduction that made it possible to serve the breeders, regardless of where in the country they lived, through artificial insemination and durability-treated stallion semen.
He encouraged veterinarians Anders and Ann Gånheim at Flyinge's veterinary department to experiment with embryo transfer, a technique that is widely used today so that young mares have time to have offspring before and during their own competition careers.
By importing and leasing top-bred jumping stallions, he also accelerated the specialization of breeding towards jumping and dressage, which today is a matter of course for most breeders.
– I wanted to get hold of good jumping stallions for the Swedish breeding, that was priority 1 for me. Jumping in particular is 50 percent inherited, and Flyinge together with Interbreed managed to buy the young stallion Robin Z from the stud farm Zangersheide in Belgium for SEK 1.2 million, says Fredric.
It turned out that Robin Z, ridden and competed by Peter Eriksson, was a first-class stallion who inherited his good jumping ability. A few years later, Flyinge managed to lease the stallion Cardento from the VDL stud in the Netherlands. Cardento was also ridden with great success by Peter. Robin Z and especially Cardento have left a large number of successful offspring within the Swedish show jumping horse breeding.
Show jumping horse breeding is close to Fredric's heart. When he turned 60 in 1998, he quit his job at Flyinge and moved to Tärnö manor in Sörmland, a new exciting era began in his life. Included in the moving trucks were two 1-year-old mares. By chance, Fredric met the farmer Erland Karlsson, who was a pig breeder on the farm Hjelmskyl and who had two daughters interested in horses. Erland ignited Fredric's idea of natural show jumping horse breeding.
Together they started a project to study how young show jumping horses react free on large hilly grounds. The knowledge Fredric had gained through his research into the biomechanics of the horse, he now wanted to use to create good durability in jumping horses through healthy breeding.
Hjelmskyl's project was nominated as one of the country's most promising Leader projects and was awarded a prize during the Almedal Week in Visby.
When Stina and Fredric returned to Skåne and Österlen in 2007, they settled at Grevlunda Nygård. Fredric was then elected as vice chairman of the association Hästen i Skåne (HiS) and responsible for one of the association's to projects; to develop Skåne into a region for the breeding and rearing of show jumping horses at the international forefront.
On Brösarp's slopes, there is very hilly land with a unique calcareous sandy steppe and a valuable flora. There, HiS has for three years conducted experiments with horse breeding during the summer.
– There is a great deal of interest in our sustainability project. This is clear when the film with English subtitles that we made last year has been seen by 115,000 viewers worldwide. This year, 2021, we are currently making another film about thoughts and ideas about Avels Upfødnings Centrum (AUC) which we believe will soon be in demand, says Fredric.
Sons Jens and Peder both compete in the highest level of international show jumping, and Fredric is of course a very committed father who often offers "tactics" when it comes to education, training his horses and not least veterinary questions.
Of course, father Fredric and mother Stina have been important inspirations for the boys ever since they learned to ride in the forests south of Uppsala. Although Fredric did not grow up on a horse farm, Stina did. She grew up on Bergby farm in Vendel, a few miles north of Uppsala. Stina's father Yngve Holmberg was a knowledgeable and respected horse man, among other things as a judge at awards for horses in various breeds. When Fredric came into the family, there were many discussions about horse breeding, training and much more.
For the young generation of horse lovers, Fredric is probably best known as the father of the Fredricson brothers. But he is also the "father" of today's successful research into the biomechanics of the horse, an extremely important research area that continues to develop year after year, not only at SLU but also in other countries.
In Fredric's footsteps there are now several prominent researchers in biomechanics at SLU, including Lars Roepstorff, Marie Rhodin and Elin Hernlund to name a few. A list of all researchers and their dissertations at Stutis and SLU that deal with biomechanics can be found at the end of the text.
Text: Carin Wrange, HästSverige. Photos: Ingvar Fredricson's photo archive.
Doctoral theses in Swedish biomechanical horse research
Ingvar Fredricson 1972
EQUINE JOINT KINEMATICS AND CO-ORDINATION
Photogrammetric Methods Involving High-Speed Cinematography.
Gunnar Nilsson
Phalangeal Joints of Standardbred Trotters
Stig Drevemo 1980
Racing trot – Computerized analysis of linear and temporal gait characteristics based on high-speed cinematography.
Göran Dalin 1984
On the back of the horse: a morphological, clinicopathological and experimental study with special reference to the sacroiliac joint.
Mikael Holmström 1994
Quantitative studies on conformation and trotting gaits in the Swedish Warmblood riding horse.
Christopher Johnston 1997
On the kinematics and kinetics of the distal limb in the Standardbred trotter.
Lars Roepstorff 1997
A force measuring horseshoe applied in kinematic analysis of the trotting horse.
Pia Gustås 2005
A biomechanical study on the hoof impact at the trot.
Anna Bergh 2006
Defocused CO2 laser irradiations in the rehabilitation of horses.
Marie Rhodin 2008
A biomechanical analysis of relationship between the head and neck position, vertical column, and limbs in the horse at walk and trot.
Josefine Wennerstrand 2008
Clinical perspectives on equine back movements.
Cecilia Lönell 2010
Yard differences in Training Management and Orthopedic Injury in Show-Jumping, Riding School, and Thoroughbred Racehorses.
Elin Hernlund 2016
Sport surfaces in show jumping.
Maria Terese Engell 2018
Postural strategies in skilled riders.
Anna Byström 2019
The movement pattern of horse and rider in different degree of collection.
Emma Persson-Sjödin 2020
Evaluation of vertical movement asymmetries in riding horses
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Scholarship recipient Eva Skiöldebrand was part of a research team conducting a clinical study of a novel drug combination that was effective in treating osteoarthritis-associated lameness in horses and restoring joint tissue. The findings could have implications for treating ostearthritis in humans as well, since horses and humans are genetically very similar. The researchers hope to conduct a clinical trial of the drug treatment in humans next.