Ownership of Doda de Miranda’s Olympic Horse Cornetto K in Question

Brazil’s Doda de Miranda and Cornetto K at the 2016 Rio Olympics

When Doda de Miranda returned to Belgium, following his Team Brazil performance at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, he soon learned that he would not be able to see his Olympic partner, Cornetto K. The 10-year-old, Hanoverian gelding (Cornet Obolensky x Calido I) is currently caught in the cross fires of de Miranda’s divorce proceedings with Athina Onassis Roussel, the French-Greek heiress and World Championship rider.

Onassis and de Miranda own multiple horses under their joint venture, AD Sport Horses, however Onassis is blocking de Miranda from riding Cornetto K. The exact ownership of the horse is to be decided by a Belgian court later this month.

The FEI recording for Cornetto K names A.A. de Miranda Neto and Victory Equestrian Sport BV, both of Brazil, as the owners as of October 2015, which is when the horse changed hands from Brazil’s Yuri Mansur Guerios to de Miranda. But due to the FEI regulation that an Olympic horse must be owned by an individual or an entity with the same nationality as the rider, it is likely that there may be more ambiguity with the true ownership following the Games.

Over the course of four rounds at the Rio Olympics, de Miranda and Cornetto K dropped only two rails—one in the team final and another in round A of the individual final—to finish 5th with Team Brazil and to tie for 9th as an individual. And in July, the pair also competed in the Furusiyya FEI Nations Cup at CSIO5* Flasterbo, where they rode fault free to help Team Brazil to a 3rd-place podium finish.