Wellington Rotary Club Emphasizes The Importance Of Service Above Self

By m. Dennis Taylor 

The importance of giving can never be overemphasized, and there’s always joy in acts of giving. This timeless bit of wisdom is taken to heart by the Wellington Rotary Club, which has been continually serving the community for 40 years.

Rotary International — of which the Wellington club is a local affiliate — is a service organization that spans the globe promoting peace and health. “It has promoted everything from polio vaccines to infrastructure and equipment for indigenes in South America,” said David Berns, the current president of the Wellington club.

The local branch is active in a range of activities, from helping hand out free food to those hardest-hit in the area by the COVID-19 pandemic, to supporting shelters for those less fortunate.

Ask any Rotarian, and you’ll get a litany of reasons to get involved with the group, but most of the explanations could easily fall into the category of bettering oneself by improving the local and worldwide communities.

The group has spent most of the past year partnering with the Village of Wellington, Feeding South Florida and others to provide weekly food boxes to some 900 local families.

“We provide six to 10 people each week to supply helping hands at the distribution point,” Berns said.

Every Tuesday morning, hundreds of cars line up at the Mall at Wellington Green for an efficient distribution of a week’s worth of supplies that have meant a great deal of difference in the lives of locals hard-hit by the present circumstances.

Another on-going project has been to get a “Buddy Bench” in each of the elementary schools in the village, with a program of peer “ambassadors” trained and set up to support anyone who feels isolated or bullied. Such a child is encouraged to merely sit on the designated, colorful bench and is soon met by another student to talk with them. The popular and successful program is being expanded.

The arrival of Santa in the end of the annual Wellington Holiday Parade is arranged by the group, as are gifts for children in hospitals and for healthcare workers. For decades, the club has supported the Back to Basics program to provide school uniforms for students returning to school each year and holiday gifts for children each December. People in times of trouble who need a place to stay are helped by the club’s longtime support the Lord’s Place, a program serving the local homeless population.

The club’s annual peace initiative and ceremony is considered by many to be one of Rotary’s signature events. Held at Wellington Rotary Peace Park near the Wellington branch library, this special event includes presentations, performances and awards presented to winning students. The events are organized and presented in honor of each United Nations International Peace Day by the Wellington Rotary Club.

Past president and 23-year club member Don Gross said the peace initiative is one of his favorite club activities. “It is held the third Sunday in September around the United Nations Peace Day, which is Sept. 21,” Gross said.

There are contests in all the schools with prizes awarded by the club. “We have a poster contest for the elementary students, poems from the middle schoolers and an essay competition for the high schools,” Gross explained.

Gross is also enthusiastic about the club’s annual dictionary giveaway to third graders.

“It has been going on for 20 years,” he said. “We give a dictionary to each student in third grade. Some people ask why we give a book when you can find everything on Google, but the kids love it. It is their book. They can hold it in their hands and flip through it.”

These are just some of the many acts of giving that the club participates in. “We primarily work in the background,” said Berns, who explained that the group doesn’t seek out publicity.

Gross said that the club works wherever it sees a need. “It is involved behind the scenes in every aspect of the community providing benefits,” he said.

That group has changed in complexion since its founding in 1980. “Originally, it was older retirees,” Berns said.

Then, when women began joining the previously all-male Rotary, the changes were marked. “Today, we are about a 50-50 mix of men and women, and the group of nearly 50 active participants itself has more younger people in their 30s and 40s,” Berns said.

Gross agreed that the shifting demographics have brought beneficial changes to the club for this era.

“Years ago, ‘supporting’ a program might mean writing a check. Today, it is the hands-on hours put in by the members, not just money,” Gross explained.

He said that members are a group of mostly businesspeople and professionals, and still many are retired. Since the chapter’s inception, even before the Village of Wellington was incorporated, the members have been and still are community leaders interested in the social good.

Community Services Coordinator Maggie Zeller joined the club some eight years ago. She pointed out that the original Rotary organization was founded in Chicago in 1905, and it wasn’t until 1987 that the all-male organization began accepting women members.

“I truly believe in the Wellington Rotary Club,” Zeller said. “I agree the club has changed with women joining… We helped it evolve from just the check writers who supported things in the past. I think we bring a humanitarian, caring and nurturing perspective of giving back to the community.”

While today’s Wellington Rotary Club is now an organization of men and women with spouses encouraged to get involved in the projects as well, “It is far from a mere networking or social club,” Gross said. “The mindset is on community service.”

That community mindset has been consistent over the years of growth in the Village of Wellington, the changing needs of its residents and the expansion of demographics in the club. Throughout it all, however, has been the simple joys contained in the act of giving.

For more information about the Wellington Rotary Club, visit www.wellingtonrotary.org.

World-Famous Dressage Olympian Tinne Vilhelmson Silfvén Enjoys Her Winters Competing In Wellington

Aiming for a possible eighth Olympic Games this summer in Tokyo, Tinne Vilhelmson Silfvén of Sweden has made Wellington her winter home for the past 10 years.

As one of the most respected and high-profile riders at the Adequan Global Dressage Festival (AGDF), Tinne has kept horses central to her life since childhood and has found happiness in the warm Florida winters.

Tinne’s mother Berit, also a dressage rider and a horse show organizer (including dressage at the 1990 World Equestrian Games in Stockholm), got her daughter involved in the sport at a young age and had her learning from some of the best in the world, like Walter Christensen, who was the chef d’équipe for Sweden at the time.

While dressage wasn’t a foregone conclusion for Tinne, she does think that the sport, which requires patience and intricacy, suits her well.

“I’m the kind of person who likes to find a new solution to different problems,” she explained. “I can sit forever and try to figure something out, and that’s a little bit how dressage can be, too. The relationship with the horse can be like that, to figure out how they think and react and how I can get them to do it the best way. I think it’s really fascinating, so I think dressage suits my personality.”

Tinne turned professional and started her own business with dressage horses at the age of 23 and made it to two Olympic Games before a meeting with Antonia Ax:son Johnson of Lövsta Stuteri changed her life in 1999. Antonia had a four-year-old stallion and asked Tinne to ride him. Since then, Lövsta Stuteri has become one of the top equine breeding operations, offering stallion breeding around the world.

“We started to talk, and after an hour in the indoor schooling arena, I ended up going home with a new job instead, which was moving over to work for her,” Tinne recalled. “It was the best thing I ever could have done. It changed my life and my possibility to be a professional rider.”

Tinne and Antonia went on to incredible success on the world stage with top performances at eight European Championships, seven FEI Dressage World Cup Finals, five FEI World Equestrian Games and five more Olympic appearances.

The standout in Tinne’s long list of talented mounts was Don Auriello, a Hanoverian gelding that received the silver medal at the 2016 Gothenburg FEI Dressage World Cup Final in Tinne’s home country of Sweden.

But among the standout memories of Don Auriello for Tinne were his Friday Night Stars freestyle performances at the AGDF.

“It’s going to stay in my heart forever, I think,” she said. “The atmosphere and the feeling in the evening is a cool memory. Don Auriello loved the atmosphere and loved to be in front of people. That’s a great feeling to sit on a horse that enjoys it and wants to show himself. I think it’s going to stay my favorite memory. I have a lot of other fantastic horses, but he was very special.”

Tinne first competed in Wellington in 2010 at the World Dressage Masters at the Jim Brandon Equestrian Center. Together with Antonia and her daughter, Sophie Morner, who had already competed jumpers at the Winter Equestrian Festival in previous years, Tinne and Antonia still come to Wellington every winter, and Tinne shares stabling with Sophie at Lövsta South.

When she first came to Wellington, her first impression was one of awe.

“It’s like a dream world for a horse person to see so many stables,” Tinne said. “You think you are coming to a normal community, but it’s just horses everywhere, and I think it is just great. Almost the whole town is built for horses, so it’s an impressive thing to see first-hand. It’s fascinating, and it has grown so much since then as well, but even then, it was amazing.”

That favorable impression extends to the AGDF. Tinne credits the show for its international feel, professional management, fantastic footing, top judges, and safe, horse-friendly stabling.

“I couldn’t think of a better way to prepare my horses for the championships than being here in the winter,” she said. “The first year when we came home [to Sweden] in the spring, I was worried the horses would be tired because they [competed] all winter, but actually the horses that were here over the winter were more fit and more ready to work than the ones that had been home in the winter in the cold.”

Being a part of the Wellington community has developed over the years for Tinne and Lövsta. Lövsta was a major festival sponsor this winter and presented the Grand Prix and Grand Prix Freestyle CDI-W during AGDF 1 in January.

Last year, Tinne and Antonia, along with Louise Nathhorst, were instrumental in bringing the Lövsta Future Challenge, a concept that started in Sweden, to Wellington. The series gives young Grand Prix horses the opportunity to compete for valuable international experience at a major competition, prize money and recognition early in their careers.

Antonia also pledged that for every entry in the Lövsta Future Challenge, Lövsta would donate $250 to the local charity, Friends of Palm Beach, a nonprofit organization that cleans the beaches of Palm Beach regularly to remove incoming plastic, trash and unnatural debris, and to educate the community on the effects of this on the environment and marine life. They partner with other nonprofit job placement programs to help end the cycle of homelessness while also helping to end the cycle of trash in the ocean. Lövsta ended up giving $8,500 to Friends of Palm Beach in 2020.

Outside of the horse show, Tinne’s husband, Jan, who works for Garmin on sailing boat navigation, joins her every winter, and her son Lucas came to Wellington and attended school in the community. While Lucas is 19 now and stays in Sweden, Tinne still enjoys the opportunities that life in Wellington affords her.

“I think this combination of being able to compete and train and still be social with my family at the same time is a dream for me,” she explained. “If you’re in Europe, then you travel for days before you even get to the show, and then you are gone for a week. Here, I can compete and still be home, which is very different. I can make the horses my focus here and still keep up with my family. I get to have both.”

While Tokyo is on her mind, the fluctuating situation regarding major sporting events leaves the rest of 2021 up in the air. For Tinne, she will continue to do what she has always done — focus on her horses and her current situation. That focus on the details that drew her to dressage in the first place remains her driving force.

“With everything going on in the world right now, I am just happy that we can keep competing and that it is possible to even do this at the same time,” Tinne explained. “That we can keep going with our passion and our professional lives is great right now; many people can barely live. I just like to stay prepared and see what happens.”

Faces of Dressage – Roxanne Trunnell

Roxanne Trunnell is a 2016 Rio de Janeiro Paralympian and a two-time FEI World Equestrian Games U.S. Para Dressage team member. Trunnell is currently the highest-ranked para dressage athlete in the world by FEI rankings and has broken numerous records. As a competitor in able-bodied dressage, Trunnell earned a United States Dressage Federation (USDF) bronze medal and was close to obtaining her silver medal before contracting a virus in 2009 that caused swelling in her brain, changing her life forever and requiring her to use a wheelchair. However, she refused to let this stifle her dreams. After a long recovery, she rode her first CPEDI event in 2013. Here in Wellington, she dominated the FEI Para Team Test Grade I CPEDI3* class with Dolton during Week 3 of the 2020 Adequan Global Dressage Festival. She secured several more victories during para dressage competitions at this year’s festival, also riding Dolton, owned by Flintwood Farm LLC.

Being Part Of Wellington’s Tight-Knit Dressage Community A Wonderful Experience For The Rizvi Family

When amateur dressage rider PJ Rizvi first came to Wellington in 1999, she was 29 years old and competing in the amateur jumpers at the Winter Equestrian Festival. She had no children and was working on dressage with her jumper to improve her flatwork. It was her friendship with Olympic dressage rider Ashley Holzer that brought her into the fold of the dressage world and kept her a part of it throughout four pregnancies in six years. But it was Wellington and the Adequan Global Dressage Festival (AGDF) that gave Rizvi the confidence to ride at the top levels of international sport and the chance to share time and horses with her whole family.

After that first winter competing at WEF, she was back in New York and taking dressage lessons with Holzer, whom she has known since she was 22 years old. But riding was put on hold when she gave birth to her first daughter Yasmin in 2001. With three more children over five years, Rizvi could only ride periodically between pregnancies.

“I showed Fourth Level after child two, Prix St. Georges after child three, and then after child four, I started doing Grand Prix,” she recalled with a laugh. “The kids were starting in ponies, so getting out to White Fences [in Loxahatchee] was difficult. It was hard for me to watch my kids and go do dressage all at the same time.”

When Equestrian Sport Productions planned and broke ground for a new horse show facility to host the AGDF, Rizvi and her husband Suhail signed up to be founding sponsors, and when the circuit started in 2012, it propelled her into the next level of the sport.

“Having the opportunity to show at Global changed things a lot for me because I went from being a very novice amateur rider, and then the very next year, I did my first CDI in Wellington with my old partner Breaking Dawn,” Rizvi said. “I was able to show the CDIs for the next three seasons with him, and I went from being just a mom with no ranking to having a world ranking, which my kids thought was very funny.”

The horse show circuit in Wellington, both jumping and dressage, brought success to the whole Rizvi family. While mom was moving up at AGDF, daughters Yasmin, Farah and Zayna were riding ponies and graduating to the equitation and junior jumper ranks. Farah also took an interest in her mother’s sport and competed in the FEI Pony dressage division at AGDF for multiple seasons.

“It’s great to pursue my passion and do something that I love,” Rizvi said. “I think it has set a good example to my girls, not just with riding but with other aspects of their life, because they realize these things take a lot of commitment and time, but at the end of the day, you just have to love it and enjoy it or it’s not worth it. I think it has been good for them to see their mother have her own passion and interests.”

Rizvi’s horse Breaking Dawn, who competed at the 2012 London Olympic Games with Holzer before Rizvi took over the ride, is 21 years old now and retired. Rizvi and “Edward” won their final class together, the Grand Prix Special CDI3*, at the 2019 AGDF.

“AGDF gave me the opportunity to develop and compete against great riders and have a really great community, and I find that the dressage community as a whole is really friendly and helpful,” she said. “I miss Friday Night Stars more than anything! To have a few thousand people watching you and cheering is just electrifying. You feel like everyone is rooting for you even if you don’t have your best test.”

Rizvi plans to compete at this year’s AGDF when time allows. While Yasmin, 20, is a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania and 17-year-old Farah is preparing for college, Zayna, 15, is “all about the jumpers.” Her son Arslan, 13, rode polo for years before making tennis his main sport. Suhail enjoys watching his wife and daughters ride but is also one who will help his wife stay up with a sick horse at night. “He really loves animals,” Rizvi noted. “He thinks it’s fun when they are spunky and do naughty things!”

The Rizvi family enjoy the summers in Wellington ever since they moved full-time from New York in 2015. Takeout and margaritas from Don Chepo’s is a regular occurrence, as is visiting friends in town for cookouts and enjoying the beautiful weather year-round.

Rizvi is closely involved with Polo for Life, a Wellington-based nonprofit that has raised almost $2 million to help support pediatric cancer patients and their families, and focuses on direct impact initiatives by partnering with local organizations to ensure that the needs of patients and their families are met and their financial hardships, resulting from a cancer diagnosis, are minimized.

It’s a cause that is close to Rizvi’s heart, as her sister Penny passed away from leukemia. Yasmin, Farah and Zayna help their mother by soliciting auction items, selling tables to the fundraising event, volunteering and enjoy spending time with the children and their siblings and taking them shopping at Christmas.

It’s a delicate balance of time management for her family, nonprofit work and riding. “I don’t know if there’s a secret,” she said. “I’m extremely organized. Family is the first priority for me. You have to create a balance. It can’t be so all consuming that the only world is horses and you’re not aware of anything else that is going on. My kids are very well-rounded, which is super important. I have always told them that they need to look at riding as a long-term sport.”

For Rizvi, the connection to AGDF is so important because it helped make dressage a lifelong sport for her.

“I didn’t grow up riding. It was something that was made possible for me in the second half of my life that I never thought could happen,” she said. “If it wasn’t here all in one place, in Wellington, I couldn’t have done it.”

That advice rings true when Rizvi looks back at her decades of time with horses, from when she was broke in her 20s and had to ride bareback starting out with her first horse, to her summer competing in CDIs in France and Austria, to this season where, at 50 years old, she will go back to the ring after two years off from international competition.

Those who weather the changes and the years and get the most out of their time with horses come away with a lifetime of memories.

Rizvi and her family will be the first to tell you that their time with horses is worth it, and the best may be yet to come.

Faces of Dressage

Each winter, the majestic sport of dressage is on display here in Wellington, home of the Adequan Global Dressage Festival, which is celebrating its 10th season this year. Often compared to “dancing with horses,” the Olympic sport of dressage showcases the grace, beauty and elegance of horse and rider pairs working together as one. While the top dressage shows will be harder to see in person this season due to COVID-19 restrictions, top riders from around the world have returned to participate in AGDF, North America’s most prestigious dressage series. AGDF opened in January and continues at Equestrian Village through April 4 featuring 10 weeks of competition, with seven of those weeks offering international, FEI-level classes. You can catch all the action streaming live at www.globaldressagefestival.com. Meanwhile, check out just a few of the amazing dressage riders competing at AGDF in our annual Faces of Dressage pictorial section.

Faces of Dressage – Steffen Peters

German-born Olympian Steffen Peters, who competes for the U.S., began riding at age 7, and by age 15 was competing at the international level. After receiving his first horse, Udon, at age 16, Peters began seriously training in dressage. It was aboard Udon that Peters won a team bronze medal when he represented the U.S. at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Peters has represented the U.S. at numerous other international competitions, including the World Equestrian Games in 2006 and 2010, when he secured bronze medals, and 2018, when he took silver. He returned to the Olympics in 2016 and helped the U.S. to the bronze medal in team dressage. Peters has been named the USEF Equestrian of the Year a record three times. Last year at the Adequan Global Dressage Festival in Wellington, he led the U.S. dressage team to a Nations Cup victory in Week 10. He was back to his winning ways this season, earning his 16th win in a row with mount Suppenkasper to open AGDF 3 by winning the FEI Grand Prix CDI4*, presented by Havensafe Farm.

Faces of Dressage – Adrienne Lyle

Adrienne Lyle was raised on a small cattle farm in Whidbey Island, Washington and has always spent time around horses. She originally rode western, then switched to English at age seven. She tried eventing before dressage became her calling. Lyle began competing at age 13. She was a member of the silver medal team at the 2002 Cosequin Junior Dressage Championships and the bronze medal Region 6 team at the 2004 North American Young Rider Championships. Career highlights include competing in the 2012 Olympic Games in London and contributing to a fourth-place team finish at the 2014 World Equestrian Games in France. Lyle and her mount Salvino had a string of wins at the 2018 AGDF. The pair qualified for the World Equestrian Games Tryon 2018, where they helped the U.S. team win the silver medal. After several big wins at the 2020 AGDF, she started this season off with a bang, notching back-to-back wins at AGDF 1 with Harmony’s Duval, including the FEI Grand Prix CDI3* and the FEI Grand Prix Special CDI3*.

Faces of Dressage – Olivia LaGoy-Weltz

Olivia LaGoy-Weltz grew up in San Francisco, where she began riding at age 5. In 2002, she moved to Europe and spent five years in Holland and Germany at several top barns. She then returned to the U.S. and started her own dressage training business. Currently, LaGoy-Weltz runs a selective training program dedicated to top-quality horse and rider development at Mountain Crest Farm and is based seasonally in northern Virginia and Wellington. LaGoy-Weltz began competing on the Florida circuit in 2009. In 2012 and 2013, she had strong performances with Rifallino. A USDF gold, silver and bronze medalist, LaGoy-Weltz was Traveling Small Tour Alternate for the 2015 Pan American Games. LaGoy-Weltz had a number of victories at the Adequan Global Dressage Festival in 2020. This year, she got off to her winning ways early, dominating the second day of the AGDF when LaGoy-Weltz and Rassing’s Lonoir bested an impressive lineup in the day’s FEI Grand Prix CDI-W, presented by Lövsta.

Faces of Dressage – Katherine Bateson-Chandler

Katherine Bateson-Chandler, born in Great Britain, moved to New Jersey when she was 13. Starting at age 16, she worked for American dressage star Robert Dover for 16 years until his retirement, traveling with the horses to international competitions. In 2010, Bateson-Chandler represented the U.S. at the 2010 World Equestrian Games in Lexington, riding Jane Clark’s KWPN gelding Nartan. Based in Wellington, Bateson-Chandler and her current mount Alcazar, also owned by Clark, regularly compete at the Grand Prix level in Wellington and overseas. They’ve been first-place Grand Prix winners every year since their partnership began in 2015. In 2018, Bateson-Chandler and Alcazar won the Grand Prix Special during AGDF Week 5 and placed third in the Grand Prix CDI4* during Week 10. In 2020, she won the FEI Grand Prix CDI5* and the CDI5* Freestyle with Alcazar at Week 7 of the AGDF. This dynamic duo is back in action this year in Wellington with several strong showings early in the season.

Faces of Dressage – Christoph Koschel

Christoph Koschel comes from a leading equestrian family in Germany, as his father ran one of the top training facilities in the world. After graduating as a lawyer, Koschel joined his father at their training stables. Koschel competed at the 2010 World Equestrian Games winning team bronze, and the 2011 European Championships, winning team silver. He had great success during this time period with the gelding Donnperignon. Koschel is known as a great coach. He has coached a lengthy roster of international riders, including his niece, Felicitas Hendricks, and all of the Japanese dressage team riders, including Kiichi Harada here in Wellington. He coached Harada at the 2016 Olympics in Rio. Koschel is a master of focus in the international arena, and many of the riders associated with him achieve great results. Koschel is off to a great start this season at AGDF in Wellington, winning the FEI Grand Prix CDI4* for freestyle during Week 3.