Dressage-News

April 4, 2023

By KENNETH J. BRADDICK

Dozens of top sport horses have been flown into America’s Midwest from around the globe for the Finals of the prestigious World Cup in travel arranged by the Dutta Corp. that has become the world’s foremost equestrian air transportation company begun by a young man from India arriving in New York almost 40 years ago with $313 in his pocket and dreams.

In a classic American story of success, Tim Dutta took jobs such as cab driver, bartender, janitor and groom to make ends meet before forming the company that bears his name on Sept. 13, 1988 with the first assignment to fly 15 horses on KLM flight 643 from Amsterdam to New York.

From its base in Wellington, Florida that is a world center of the Olympic sports of dressage and jumping as well as a polo circuit second only to Argentina, Dutta Corp. arranged transportation of the staggering number of almost 7,000 horses in 2022, about 70% across the Atlantic and 30% within North America.

To say that the lives of Tim, his wife Susan who has had a long career in U.S. high performance dressage, and son, Timmy, at the age of 21 one of America’s outstanding polo talents playing at the game’s highest level, center on horses is an understatement.

After a day in which Timmy’s team played in a U.S. Gold Cup polo match, worked for some hours in the offices of Dutta Corp., then joined his father watching Susan compete one of her horses at a CDI at the Global Dressage Festival, this is how Timmy put it, with a smile:

“In conversations at home we have to work on not talking about horses. We try not to talk about horses. But it’s impossible.”

For Tim Dutta, one of his part-time jobs as a groom, for which he had no previous experience, after arriving as a recent high school graduate on May 13, 1984 changed his life.

As the son of a mother and father who were both officers in the Indian army, he was allowed to ride horses which he did in show jumping and eventing when they were available at military posts.

“I knew nothing about grooming in India,” he recalled of his experience after arriving in New York. “I couldn’t make a go riding so at the end of the day I was a groom. I quickly learned it was an amazing profession–the most needed profession in support of high performance horses… of any horses, period. Without a good groom the rider is non existent.”

Going to airports to ship horses, he saw a major hole in the transportation business model–shippers at the time were freight forwarders, not horse people.

“So then I started the company with the policy–for horses by horse people with horse people at every layer,” he said of setting up the operation in New York 35 years ago. “We might not always write the proper emails and invoices, but everyone in the office is a horse person, and whatever other skills they have we can apply in the business.”

Since then, “we have grown by leaps and bounds,” becoming “truly an industry leader at what we do. We’re probably the largest in the world at what we do.”

Growth of the Florida horse shows and the polo circuit in winter was initially the single biggest part of the business. But now horses fly into Miami every week for 52 weeks a year. At the height of the winter season, there are three flight a week and in summer goes back to one flight a week.

However, there are also flights into New York, Chicago and Los Angeles and sending and returning horses to compete within North America and in Europe.

Dutta maintained a remote office in New York until Covid-19 then moved its year-round base of operations for its 36 employees and 30 sub contractors, including grooms that travel with horses and support staff at airports, to Wellington.

“We’re blessed to have the very best team in the world that are our family,” he said. “Our whole ethic and culture here is the horse comes first, then the grooms and then the owners. When we do the right thing for the horse, business just keeps coming. It’s that simple.

“You can do all the marketing you want but you’re only as good as your last flight. We really believe that whether you’re a €5,000 pony or a $15 million show jumper the care is the same, the concern is the same, the delivery of excellence seven days a week.”

Delivering horses to the Tokyo Olympics, the Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, major league shows such as the World Cup Finals; the jumping Global Champions Tour, Nations Cup Finals in Barcelona, Spain; for Spruce Meadows in Canada is Dutta’s business.

“Every year starts with Wellington, Florida,” he said, “a great blending point because we have horses coming from all over world that continues to grow simply because it’s the best circuit in the world with the best weather, no better show grounds and management, and the sport is top. Ocala has also created a destination for jumpers and dressage. And Wellington is second after Argentina as the highest rated polo tournaments in the world.”

The business invests back into the sport–extensive sponsorship programs in dressage, jumping, eventing and polo. The dressage teams managed by U.S. Equestrian are officially named for the Dutta Corp.

Susan Dutta met the man who was to become her husband when she was importing a dressage horse she’d bought in the Netherlands after switching from eventing. At the time, she was living in Southern Pines, North Carolina.

“I sold that horse and with some money my dad gave me to buy a car, I bought Maple Magnum as Tim insisted I buy a real Grand Prix horse to learn on,” she said. “That horse made me fall in love with dressage. Ann Guptill had taken him to the Pan American Games. He was beautifully trained with beautful piaffe and passage. He was so generous and made it so much fun. We were partners for 2 1/2 years.”

Since then, Susie has developed about 19 horses to Big Tour.

With West Side Lady, she made her first championship team–for the 2003 Pan Ams in Santo Domingo, a year after winning the national title. But the pair were named as alternate. At the time only three horses rode in the competition, a situation she describes as “the worst position in the world” as she didn’t ride. The same format was applied at the next Pan Ams four years later in Rio de Janeiro. Although the rules specified the alternate was a team member and entitled to be in the awards and receive a medal, the organizers didn’t like it and handed the medal in a paper bag to this correspondent to pass along.

Nevertheless, she made the most of the continental championship on her horse, Pik L. With a lot of time on her hands, she was able to receive a lot of training from Klaus Balkenhol, the German Olympic gold medalist who was the U.S. team coach and whom she had gone to Europe the previous year on a training grant.

In addittion to competing and developing several horses to Grand Prix, Susie has a real estate license focusing on selling properties in and around Wellington.

“It’s been a lot of fun building a nice business quickly,” she said.

The household is 100% equestrian, including the housekeeper who had been housekeeper for 20 years for the late polo great Carlos Gracida who died after a horse accident in 2014.

“We live and breathe the horse business from the business side to horses,” she said. “We love it, we talk about it, we share ideas. Nobody ever gets mad at anybody for being late by spending as much time as you want with the horses. We’re, super supportive; mental coaches to each other… Timmy and I are mental coaches, Tim is the driver always pushing the bar.”

In addition to her own riding in which she’s coached by German team rider Frederic Wandres, Susie tries to go to Timmy’s team practices and never misses a game if she can help it. As polo is one of the most dangerous sports, she explains, “I want to be there to support him and to be there just in case…”

Carly Muma manages the horses for Dutta Stables that includes dressage horses in Wellington and Timmy’s string of polo ponies at the family’s Flying D polo farm of 20 acres in Port Mayaca, about 40 miles west of Wellington.

“It’s a great lifestyle,” Susie said. “We’re super blessed to do this. One thing abut Wellington is it’s the horses that bring us together–these amazing horses and the lifestyle around it.

“Polo has brought a whole new thing to our lives in the last 10 years, it’s a really nice down to earth family sport. It’s been really enriching.

“I live the dream. Your job is to go ride your beautiful five hores and take them to shows. Did I ever dream I would be the mother of this incredible kid who plays polo like he does? I would never thunk it!”

Timmy Dutta was born into the world of horse sports.

“I was first involved straight out the womb,” he laughs. My family told me they had me and within a month I was on the road with them to California for a horse show. So I think it’s in my blood. I was born into a horse family, it’s all I really know.

“All I really want to be is a horseman and be involved in the horse industry, make an impact for the benefit of the generations to come.”

His parents, Susan and Tim, got him a pony when he was three years old, doing lead line classes. He was being a kid–“I loved horses but wasn’t in love with them.”

His real love affair began at age eight when he was with his mother at Rudolf Zeillinger’s farm in Germany.

A big fancy truck owned by Guido Klatte, who was a German partner of Dutta Corp., showed up.

“Out popped this little Shetland pony,” he recalls. “The pony lived in a pop-up tent next to the barn with multi million dollar show horses. It gave me responsibility and gave me the love of horses… it was a pony, my ride, taught me how to take care of horses. Bondy was the one who made me fall in love, we bonded.”

Guido also got him into jumping and over the years Erica and Lee McKeever at Barney and McLain Ward’s Castle Hill barn at Brewster, New York taught him more. Paul Valiere was one of his trainers.

Timmy remembers the no stirrup lessons. “It’s one of those things when you’re doing it, it sucks, plain and simple. But looking back I would not change a thing because it set my riding to be something different. When I came into polo when I was 12 years old the second I tried stick and ball around my father’s friends Carlos and Memo Gracido it was different. This is it!” One of his jumpers was retired, another leased.

“I moved straight to polo and I haven’t stopped, full speed,” he said. “That one pony I stick and balled with my father we still have. She’s incredible. I was fascinated by polo. I loved it, gobbled up as much information as I could.”

Now, he plays polo at 22-goal level, the highest recognized in the U.S. and his team this season made it to the quarterfinals of the Gold Cup tournament in Wellington.

In Argentina, he’s at 24 goals and is looking to build up in about the next year.

“I’ve had the good fortune in polo as with jumping to train with some incredible people,” Timmy said. “Layers and layers of knowledge, horsemanship and making horses , playing the sport itself.”

He has 36 horses, 30 in Port Mayaca and four in Argentina where he’s building a string so he can start playing bigger tournaments.

Timmy started working with his father at Dutta Corp. in 2017 ahead of the World Equestrian Games at Tryon, North Carolina where hundreds were brought in from around the world.

“That first big project made me fall head over heels in love with the company.” As much as possible, Timmy splits his time on polo and the business.

“Conversations at home we have to work on not talking about horses,” he jokes. “We try not to talk about horses, but it’s impossible.”

Although he’s fully immersed in polo, Timmy believes dressage is the essence of all equestrian sports. He talks to his mother about the young horses he’s developing, how to work his young horses, how to get pirouettes… “I’m trying to achieve some of the same goals where I want my horse to stop and rein back and to do pirouettes, half pirouettes.”

He takes riding tips from his mother, but admits, “Mom fires me all the time, says I’m untrainable. I think that’s just because I’m her son.”

[For full disclosure, this reporter had crossed paths previously with the Dutta family–first as a correspondent for United Press International assigned from Vietnam war coverage to the 1971 India-Pakistan war that led to the formation of Bangladesh and discovery at Calcutta airport of troops loading aboard aircraft for a paratrooper assault on what was then East Pakistan. It was confirmed by an officer planeside who years later, was found to be Tim Dutta’s father. Again, with no knowledge of the connection, this correspondent was Dutta Corp.’s seventh customer, shipping a horse from Europe to Maryland, personally hand delivered by Tim Dutta with a new fancy halter.]