It takes a while to scroll through songs Anna Buffini has listed on the notes app of her phone. The 29-year-old dressage rider is known for her dynamic freestyle music choices, and she’s got more ideas for music than she can feasibly use: Beyoncé, Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey and Christina Aguilera, for example, to create a diva-themed freestyle for her top mare “Diva,” FRH Davinia La Douce. And thanks to a Netflix documentary called “The Greatest Night of Pop” about the making of “We Are The World,” she’s gone down “an extreme deep dive of ’80s music” recently, with several new records making their way onto her jam-packed inspiration list.
“The freestyle ideas are just off the chain right now in my brain, and there’s going to be some really entertaining ones coming down the pipeline in the future,” she said.
Earlier this month, Buffini and Diva, a 17-year-old Hanoverian (Don Frederico—Anneliese R, A Jungle Prince) debuted another crowd favorite to the music from “Mulan” during the Del Mar Dressage Opener CDI3* in Del Mar, California, where they scored a 73.66%.
“I want to keep making freestyles entertaining, because that’s the most exciting part of our sport to the general public,” she said. “While I love the Grand Prix and the Special, the freestyle is what is going to be what gets the outside world paying attention; it’s going to the biggest drawer of crowds. We need to keep making them more and more entertaining, and I think it’ll help our sport a ton.”
Watch her winning freestyle from the Del Mar Dressage Opener CDI3* with FRH Davinia La Douce, courtesy of Horse&Country.tv:
The Del Mar show also marked Buffini’s debut with Fiontini, a three-time young horse world champion. Buffini purchased the 14-year-old Danish Warmblood mare (Fassbinder—Rapitala, Romanov) in late 2021 and has spent the past two years building a strong partnership with “Fio.” The pair finished second in both the Grand Prix (72.00%) and Grand Prix Special (72.44%) behind Steffen Peters and Suppenkasper, for an exciting start to their competitive career.
While she’s optimistic about the future, she’s focusing on her training and not letting the moment get too big.
“I was listening to C.J. Stroud, who is the quarterback for the Houston Texans. He was talking about how he has so much pressure on his shoulders, but the kind of pressure we have as professional athletes is such a blessing,” Buffini said. “Even if it is a lot to deal with, it’s something I’m so grateful to have to work through.”
When Buffini is training she’s laser focused, but in her free time, her interests are varied as they come, so we caught up with her to find out what she’s been up to both in and out of the tack.
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You took your time with Fio before your show ring debut. Can you talk about what guided your decision-making with her?
The decision was really between me and Guenter [Seidel, my trainer], so he had just as much say in it as I did. She just took a very long time to come around to my style of riding, and I think if I went out too soon, I wouldn’t have been able to ride her my style, and she wouldn’t have been able to trust my style and be comfortable in it and stay on the same page.
It takes an extreme amount of patience, and that’s something that is hard with social media. You see everybody posting the perfect video—and you should put your great videos out there—but what we’re not seeing is the day-to-day struggle. When you feel like you’re behind, and you’re looking at all these great riders, you’re like, “OK, well they’re so far ahead of me.” Comparison is just the killer of moments and of joy, and I really just had to not compare myself and my story and my journey to other riders and just be like “I know how I ride; I know how Guenter has trained me to ride, and until this horse and I completely gel with this riding style, we’re not going to be able to represent ourselves in the show arena how I want to.”
What is Fio like to ride?
She is a big, big girl, and she is the most powerful horse I’ve ever sat on in my life. It’s just constant power. She’s like a dragon. I call her my dragon because she just has endless energy, and she is always ready to go; her brain’s always working. She’s always like, “OK let’s go. Where are we going? What are we doing? Come on, I’m game.”
If you could create your perfect teammate, she would be that perfect teammate because she’s always game. She’s so powerful. She’s so floaty. Honestly I don’t know if I’ll ever ride a more talented horse in my career. That’s how good of a horse she is, so I just need to keep working to be able to show that to everybody.
Your younger horse Flynn Ryder has become a social media star. What was your reaction when you realized how popular he was becoming?
We were shook. It’s funny because the time he started blossoming was the time I started working with my management and social media team, and we were just like what do we have on our hands right now? We were like, “Let’s try this; let’s see if he’ll play with a box; let’s see if he’ll play with a toy. Let’s see if he’ll roam around without us on him, let’s see if he’ll let you stand on him and do trick riding.” And every single thing we said we just wanted to try a crazy idea, he was like, “Oh yeah, let’s do it. This is the best day of my life.”
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He’s such a California surfer dude. He’s the most chill, easy-going guy, and then it’s so funny because he is the spiciest horse I’ve ever longed in my entire life. I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know if he was trained before me that this is your wild time, but it was so funny because I was like, “Oh he’s perfect at this; he’s perfect at that; I don’t have to longe him ever; I can just get on him.” One time I longed him because I didn’t have time to ride [and] he was leaping through the air, pulling me off my feet. I was just laughing the whole time as he was being wild on the longe line because it was so out of character for him. It was so funny to see a wild side of him, because 99% of him is the perfect gentlemen. He loves being in the party. I think he has major FOMO. So if there’s a group of people, if there’s kids around, he just loves being a part of it.
At the end of the last year you got to work out with jockey Mike Smith and practice on a racing dummy. What was that experience like?
Just to be in the same room as one of the greatest of all time to do something like that was such an honor. It also turns out he is one of the nicest humans I’ve ever met. He is so nice and charismatic, and he has such a heart for helping out younger riders, which was so encouraging because I really have a heart for helping out young riders as well.
Working out with him—I was sweating to keep up. The man was 58, and he is as fit as anybody I know. Then I sat on that Equicizer; it resembles Zenyatta, and it shows you kind of what it’s like to ride a race horse. First of all, I barely lasted a minute standing like a jockey; the way your legs are burning and shaking is unbelievable. What I always tell people, now that I’ve ridden it, is if you’re not a horse rider it’s hard to even understand how hard it is: how much force, how fast the horse is running, how strong you have to be in your core to stay in that position. It’s just unbelievable.
You mentioned listening to advice on handling pressure from Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud earlier. Are you a big football fan?
My dad is a huge San Diego Chargers fan—emphasis on “San Diego”—so when they went to Los Angeles, we were all pretty heartbroken. Deep down I’ll always be a Chargers fan, but it’s always a little disappointing. This year we have Jim Harbaugh [as the Chargers’ head coach], and we’re kind of back on the Chargers wagon. I’ll always be a Chargers fan because I am a die-hard San Diego girl. But this year I was kind of on the Eagles bandwagon, and then I was on the Ravens, then I liked the 49ers. Of course, the Chiefs are amazing, but I picked all the losers this year.
My whole family has this huge fantasy football draft every year, and it honestly is the highlight of our life. We look forward to this more than anything. Some of my favorite memories are from this football draft. We prep for it every year, and then every year we all go off of our plan. We pick so randomly, and it’s like who did we just end up with? We have this huge group chat, and we’re just texting back and forth all the time. That honestly is some of my favorite memories right now. We’re huge, huge sports fans, and the NFL is easily our favorite sport.
