Equestrian coach profile

EQUESTRIAN

COACH PROFILE

Simone Kann and Balmoral Henton

Equestrian at Dio has continued to succeed this year, with both our dressage and eventing teams placing third in their respective North Island competitions. All our riders performed exceptionally well, with many of them placing within the various disciplines. We have a lot of promise coming through in our younger riders, as we found out earlier in the year when we held a camp for our equestrian girls at the Hunua Pony Club.

This year we introduced a new coach, Simone Kann. Simone has represented both Australia and New Zealand, and brings a wealth of knowledge and skills to the equestrian team. She has successfully trained riders and horses from lower to Olympic levels to reach their own individual goals and potential. We are very lucky to have her in the team and have asked her some questions so everyone can get to know her. When did you first start riding and how did you know it was what you wanted to pursue? I started riding when I was nine years old. I made the decision to pursue my riding career when I turned 17 and went to wor for some high-profile Australian riders. My first Australian representation was for the Australian Trans-Tasman young rider eventing team when I was 20. From there I went on to produce 18 upper-level eventing horses, as well as two World Cup show jumpers. During this time I was named in four ‘A-listed’ Australian teams.

Who has been a big influence throughout your career? There have been many influential people who have made an impact on my career. My parents are number one for supporting my vision – they kept supporting me, not only when I did well, but also when the chips were down. I was lucky enough to have access to endless Australian thoroughbreds retired from racing, which I produced as competition horses as well as breeding our own named with the prefix Balmoral. What is one of your best memories? The best memories I have are of representing Australia and New Zealand, as well as producing horses and selling them on to represent countries such as Thailand, England, Japan, Malaysia, the USA, New Zealand and Australia.

What do you enjoy most about coaching? While I enjoyed competing on the world stage, I now get so much more satisfaction from training and developing our young riders of the future. I am very focused and passionate about their development and progression as I believe this is the age where the training is most influential to their riding success – both now and the future.

Why did you choose to coach at Dio? When the Dio equestrian coaching job became available, I was coaching in Kunming, China. Dio has a very good reputation and I wanted the opportunity to be involved in the future performances of the equestrian team and to develop a winning team formula.