“Fun” Danish Partnership in Florida to Campaign Grand Prix Horse My Lady
13 years ago StraightArrow Comments Off on “Fun” Danish Partnership in Florida to Campaign Grand Prix Horse My Lady
By KENNETH J. BRADDICK
WELLINGTON, Florida, Nov. 13–A “fun” partnership between Mikala Münter Gundersen and former Dane and active amateur Janne Rumbough has acquired the 11-year-old Danish Warmblood mare My Lady to compete on the Florida winter circuit then head to Europe with the goal of the Danish championships next year.
My Lady, by Michellino out of a mare by Ritterstern, was bought from Mette Rafn, a former student of Mikala. Janne and Mikala will own the horse together.
Mette trained the mare from the age of six up to Grand Prix, competing at natonal level in Denmark including this year’s Copenhagen horse show, but could not afford to campaign her internationally.
The mare arrives Monday and will be in quarantine in Wellington for two weeks before going to Mikala’s barn.
Janne has lived in the U.S. for many years and became a citizen 15 years ago. She has seven horses in her Wellington barn and said she needed a new horse “like I need a hole in the head,”
Mikala rode for the Danish team on the stallion Leonberg, now 17 and retired, at Rotterdam and Aachen in 2009 and 2010. She has two children with her Danish jumper rider husband, Henrik Gundersen, and they have lived in Florida for almost eight years.
“We’re in it for the sport and for the fun,” said Janne, who is 67, and trains with Mikala, 43–“110 years between us,” she joked.
Mikala said that Mette sent her a video of My Lady four months ago and she in turn showed it to Janne, “because she has good eye for horses.”
“We both fell in love with the mare,” she said.
She went to Denmark to try her out and declared her “a cool horse.”
Janne said they tried to raise funds to buy the horse as an investment and eventually she went to her husband, Stan, who was less than enthusiastic.
“I said to him,” she recalled laughing, “‘You always promised me a Grand Prix horse but I never wanted one before. This is your last chance to give me one.'”
“She’s going to be in Mikala’s barn because they have a Horsegym (Henrik is the U.S. distributor for the treadmill) and I don’t.”
The deal is that Janne gets to ride My Lady when Mikala is not riding the mare.
“We need to get to know one another,” Mikala said of the mare. The goal is to get her ready for the season.
The mare is fit and ready to be ridden immediately in readiness for the Florida circuit.
Janne grew up riding ponies in Denmark then moved to the U.S. in her early 20s to go to college. She was instrumental in creatng the Florida winter dressage circuit in the 1970s and has seen it grow into perhaps the largest of its type in the world to include 11 CDIs from mid-January through mid-April in 2012.
“It’s a Danish horse, Mikala is from Denmark and I’m ex-Danish,” she said.
“We intend to have a lot of fun.”
