Tina’s Tenacity The passion Tina inherited from this amazing performance family pushes her to heights beyond the norm on a daily basis. On her big black Danish Warmblood stallion Calecto V, she’s aiming for a spot on the U.S. team at the World Equestrian Games. With the WEG in America for the first time, it complements Tina’s history as her family’s first generation born in America. She nearly represented the United States in


the past when she was short listed for the 2000 Sydney Olympics with Justice and 2004 Athens Olympics with Anna Karenina. Unfortunately a career-ending injury to Anna Karenina left Tina in need of a great partner. The pursuit led her to an auction in Denmark in 2006 where she was the solitary bidder on an eight-year-old stallion, once out at Prix St. Georges, but with a weak hind end. The walk was good, the trot fair and the canter was beautiful. “I saw a horse I could afford,” she recalls, “I was


thinking I wanted to train a nice horse. I was not thinking of the team and no one saw him as a potential team horse.” Today Calecto V is a completely different horse.


In his second year at Grand Prix with the muscling of a horse in top condition, Tina remarks, “He is now twice the size he was and has so much personality. He feels good about himself!” For their first Grand Prix test Tina was still


recovering from a fall down the stairs at her Palm City, Florida home, but she was determined to ride anyway. Surgery had put ten screws and two plates in her leg and Calecto relaxed on a six month vacation. Their relationship is a special partnership and she didn’t want anyone else training him. “My ankle broke in nine places. I lost six months of


riding. Life was not looking so grand at that time. A year and half later things changed. Today I’m thrilled with my life.” Since that first test Tina rode when she was not


yet walking 100 % on her own, Calecto has won major competitions at Dressage at Devon, the Wellington Classic Spring Challenge CDI and the Kentucky Cup CDI***.


Unique Family History Horses and performance are in Tina’s genes. Her family began their equestrian fame in the circus tents of Eastern Europe. As if out of storybook, Tina’s great-grandfather, 15-year-old Leopold Konyot really did run away from his Hungarian home to join the circus. That was 1870. By the time he was 21 he had


worked his way up from stable groom to acrobat and aerialist to the boss’s son-in-law and at last to owner of Circus Leopold. Wife Henrietta, Leopold and their 12 children


were renowned bareback riders and performed with several European circuses. In 1907 John Ringling contracted the family to join his newly acquired Barnum and Bailey Circus. All 25 Konyots toured with the U.S. circus until 1912 when they returned to Europe and opened the successful Konyot Bros. Great American Circus and Wild West Show. Among all those children was the fourth son


Arthur Konyot (“Pop”) who would be sought after for dressage expertise by American dressage pioneers including Chuck Grant and Violet Hopkins, along with celebrities of the day including Arthur Godfrey. Young Arthur fell in love and married Russian


ballerina Manya Guttenberg in 1914. Soon after he with two of his brothers were conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army. Son Alex was born in Budapest in 1915; daughter Dorita in France in 1923. Years following World War I were spent managing


a circus in Italy and performing with French circuses. Arthur was sought after for his training talent with animals which in addition to horses included camels, zebras, bears, dogs, and monkeys. The circus audiences especially loved his acts with horses at liberty. In 1926 Arthur’s family, along with two bareback


horses, a high-school horse and five bears, moved to the Iberian Peninsula where the Konyots became celebrated high-school trainers and riders. Young Alex and Dorita also enjoyed the opportunity to work with the last of the Portuguese Royal Masters of the Horse, Mestre Joaquin Gonzales de Miranda, and to befriend Portuguese dressage icon Nuno Oliveira. Riding Andalusians and Lusitanos, the Konyots


created a high school act that traveled through Europe to great applause. Threatened by war and Hitler’s anti-Hungarian policies first sent the family to Poland and next to Paris where in 1939 Alex was drafted into the French Foreign Legion and sent to North Africa. The circus kept Alex out of harm’s way when


an American visa allowed him to join his family in 1940 at the opening of the John Ringling’s circus at Madison Square Garden in New York. The Konyots continued to perform with Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey through 1944 when Alex’s mother Manya, ballerina and bareback rider, died. In the meantime Alex had joined the U.S.


Army cavalry division. A valued interpreter whose continental adventures led him to learn French,


Tina on Calecto V competing in South Florida. Photo by Mary Phelps Warmbloods Today 15


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