Tina Konyot Back in the Arena with Diamantino at 2017 CDN Wellington

Shows

2017 CDN Wellington

American Olympic team rider Tina Konyot has introduced a new ride to the small tour show ring, Diamantino, at the Florida competition season kick off on 6 - 8 January 2017. Trained from novice to FEI level by Konyot, the Hanoverian gelding Diamantino has proven a challenge along the way but is now coming of age according to Tina.

Aboard the Danish warmblood Calecto V, Konyot was a member of the U.S. Dressage Team at the 2012 Olympic Games and 2014 World Equestrian Games. Calecto V retired from Grand Prix sport after the 2014 WEG and served one more year as a youth rider schoolmaster.

Konyot's own show career continued at small tour level with the now 16-year old Hanoverian Wyoming (by Weltmeyer x Donnerhall) in 2015 and she rode one CDI show in 2016 on the 11-year old Dutch bred Baximiliana (by Johnson x Ferro).

At the first CDN of 2017 in Wellington, Florida, last weekend, Konyot was seen aboard a new horse, the 8-year old Hanoverian bred Diamantino (by Desperados x Lauries Crusador xx), which Tina and her friends and business partners bought at Jan Dirk Giesselmann's barn in Germany at the end of 2013. The pair made its show debut in Wellington and contested two Prix St Georges tests in which they scored 64.211% and 67.237%.

"My boy did his very first horse show, I'm so proud of him," Konyot told Eurodressage, adding that Diamantino is "a very special horse that has had some delay in his upbringing because of some terrible behavioral issues. He broke my knee the summer of 2015 and the summer of 2016 he has come into himself. Everyone told me to never ride him again but I'm my father's daughter and never give-up. So dreams do come true and Diamond and I are on a new adventure together."

Konyot is planning on riding some CDI's with him this year, but mentioned that "his first show in his life was last week, so one day at a time."