(dressage-news.com) WELLINGTON, Florida, May 12, 2014–Devon Kane, just four months after starting international Grand Prix at home in Florida with her Destiny that she has brought up from a youngster, is jumping into big time competition in Europe for the first time.
Munich at the end of May, Rotterdam in mid-June where the United States hopes to field a Nations Cup team that would also include Susan Dutta of Wellington on Currency DC and Brian Hafner of Sonoma, California on Lombardo LHF, and Verden, Germany in early August are on the tentative schedule for the 2007 North American Young Rider individual gold and team bronze medal rider.
As she did in 2013, Devon and the 11-year-old Danish Warmblood gelding (Diamond Hit x Rubinstein) as well as a six-year-old she is aiming for small tour will be based with German championship team veteran Hubertus Schmidt. And it will mark a year since the end of an almost lifelong training relationshp with U.S. Olympian Michelle Gibson who moved back to her native Georgia.
“I’ve never shown with Hubertus there as I will be doing at Munich so I’m very excited,” the 28-year-old Devon told dressage-news.com. “He brings out the best in my riding.
“Working with him has been amazing, especially now I’m a big kid. There’s no pressure, just get to keep doing what I’m doing.”
At home, she works regularly with young Florida-based German trainer Kevin Kohmann with some help from Debbie McDonald who with her husband, Bob, has bought a home in Wellington and expects to be based here for much of the year centered around the winter-long Global Dressage Festival. Kevin’s German accent, she laughs, as well as his training methods similar to Hubertus are “comforting.”
Destiny was bought in Denmark as a five-year-old with no show record that Devon jokes was probably the reason she got a good deal, has been taken through the American levels. The pair was successful at small tour in 2012 and performed their first CDI Grand Prix at the end of January followed by three more shows to the end of March on the Florida winter circuit.
“Our expectations did not work out the way we wanted,” she said of Grand Prix scores that rose to better than 68 per cent from their starting result of 65 per cent. Both horse and rider were new to the intensity of the Big Tour and had to learn how long to warm up, how to deal with Destiny’s reactions to wraps coming off ahead of going into the competition arena and other lessons.
“Its about getting everything put together,” she said of heading to Germany, “the pieces and parts that we need to clean up. We’re beginning to see brilliance and what is going to come.”
They will stay in Germany until the end of August and then return to Wellington to prepare for the 2015 Global Dressage Festival.
The family’s Diamante Farm in Wellington is for sale and land has been bought within the equestrian community for a new facility.
