Dressage-News

By KENNETH J. BRADDICK

WELLINGTON, Florida, Mar. 9, 2022-When Anna Buffini rides FRH Davinia la Douce in the World Cup Final in four weeks she will be living a dream from 24 years ago when she began gymnastics at the age of three driven to represent America. An injury at 10 ended that path, but a “bratty little pony” that tried to buck her off every day came a year later and set her on a new road.

Anna fulfilled her goal at the Global Dressage Festival on Davinia, the 15-year-old Hanoverian that she describes as “the little miracle mare that nobody expected anything from” that she bought in 2019.

Earning one of the two places reserved for North America in the total lineup of 18 rider and horse combinations to go to the Final of the only annual global championship came in the last qualifying competition in the Americas. The pair performed a freestyle unlike any they had before–with Anna singing on the recording–for a personal best score and the first victory for the partnership.

The experience was “totally surreal” to be able to put on display on the world stage her two passions–singing and horses.

Anna, one of a family of six children, thanks her parents for instilling a belief in hard work to achieve success. Her mother, Bev Robinson, was a University of Tennessee volleyball star who was selected for the 1988 Olympic team, and is now an educator and author. Her father, Brian, an Irish immigrant, created one of the world’s most successful business coaching and training enterprises.

She was a working student with 18-hour work days and groomed for herself for five years.

Hard work was not the only attribute she learned in  her family.

Anna, based in San Diego, California near her family, is friendly, and honest in talking about her horses and herself, never known to indulge in two characteristics that are common in high performance sports–making excuses for failure or self-promotion when things appear to go well.

The climb in top sport has not always been easy.

Anna first made her mark on Sundayboy, a KWPN gelding that had been ridden by Günter Seidel in Europe in 2011 and taken over for her first competition as a Young Rider in 2014. Günter, who earned three team medals at the Olympics for the U.S., became her trainer, a role he continues.

Her record the first year was stellar–nine straight CDI Young Rider victories in California capped by North American Youth Championship team gold. The pair moved up to Big Tour in 2015 then the Under-25 division with three victories and five second places in competitions on both the East and West Coasts until Sundayboy retired at the age of 18 in 2017.

In 2015, Anna bought Wilton, a KWPN gelding, as a successor to Sundayboy. After initial success it didn’t work out and she stopped riding the horse in 2020.

Then came the opportunity in 2019 to buy Davinia from former U.S. team coach Klaus Balkenhol and an Olympic gold medalist, whose daughter Annabel had begun Big Tour competition on the mare.

Two years later, she was riding Davinia on the American Nations Cup teams at Rotterdam and Aachen, Germany, the World Equestrian Festival that is so esteemed it is likened to the Wimbledon of tennis or the Masters in golf as the world’s most prestigious tournaments.

“A lot of people look at me and think I’m some spoiled kid who buys nice horses,” she said. “If you’re a top rider you know it takes work, a lot, a lot of grit. It’s something I’m very grateful that my parents instilled in us–hard work.

“I have incredible opportunities. I have an incredible life. I’m not getting bombed in Ukraine. Perspectively we have so much to be grateful for. But I have worked for this. And I’m very, very grateful I’ve been able to work for this for so long.”

She’s equally grateful to have done it on Davinia–“I got it done on the little miracle mare that nobody expected anything from.

“It’s not like me just buying Fio, buying a nice horse and blasting off,” she said.

The “Fio” she refers to is Fiontini,  the Danish Warmblood mare (Fassbinder x Romanov) that Jurado Lopz Severo of Spain rode for Helgstrand Dressage to the young horse triple crown–world champion at the ages of five, six and seven.

Anna bought the mare, now 12 years old, after Patrik Kittel rode the horse at the Aachen Nations Cup where she was on the U.S. team.

She is yet to compete the horse that she has worked while in Wellington throughout the winter circuit.

Anna also has a strong sense of loyalty and gratitude.

Frederic Wandres, the German team rider competing for the second year at Global and who rode for his nation at the Aachen Nations Cup, was someone she did not know at all before this year’s Wellington circuit.

“We met at the first show, kind of,” she said. “I decided to be brave and we asked him and Lars Ligus out to dinner.”

The result was a friendship that Anna said has had “a huge impact on my season.”

“They have become some of the nicest friends I’ve ever made,” she said. “Just his wisdom. Being on the German team he has so much wisdom and knowledge to give. A lot of times he’ll say things I use in my own training or just in the mindset of riding.

“Along with Günter he was a huge influence on  me trying out for the World Cup. We went to dinner… when I had no idea what I was trying to do. I just did the World Cup on a whim. He was, ‘You have to try, you have to go for it.’

“That’s when I made up my mind, If someone like that believes in you and someone like Günter believes in you who’s been there even if I’m young and less experienced it makes you believe in yourself more and want to go for it.

“They are at such a higher level and have such a perspective to bring to me who’s never done it.”

Lars braided Davinia for the Grand Prix Freestyle that qualified Anna for the Final.

“The only thing that would make it better,” Anna said of going to the Final in Leipzig, Germany next month “would be if Freddie makes it, too.”