| Álvaro Alfonso de Miranda Neto | |
|---|---|
Álvaro de Miranda Neto with Ashleigh Drossel Dan |
|
| Born | February 5, 1973 São Paulo, Brazil |
| Occupation | Brazilian Olympic equestrian athlete Owner, AD Sport Horses |
| Spouse | Cibele Dorsa (divorced in 2002) Athina Onassis Roussel (married since December 2005) |
| Children | Viviane de Miranda |
| Parents | Ricardo Miranda Elisabeth Neto |
| Olympic medal record | ||
|---|---|---|
| Equestrian | ||
| Bronze | 2000 Sydney | Team jumping |
| Bronze | 1996 Atlanta | Team jumping |
Álvaro Alfonso de Miranda Neto (more commonly: Álvaro de Miranda, or "Doda" Miranda) (born 5 February 1973) is an Olympic-class Brazilian show jumping rider. He is married to Athina Onassis Roussel. He is president of the organizing committee behind the Athina Onassis International Horse Show, which debuted in 2007 as the fifth stage of the Global Champions Tour in Sao Paulo.[1] In 2008, the AOIHS-Sao Paulo event was the final phase of the tour. For the tour in 2009, the host city of the AOIHS was Rio de Janeiro.
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Miranda is the son of businessman Ricardo Miranda[2] and his first wife, psychologist Elisabeth "Beth" Neto.,[3][4]
With two brothers and a sister, Miranda grew up in Brazil, though a young boy in 1983, he began training for competitive show jumping at Nelson Pessoa's prestigious riding school in Belgium.[4] Miranda has a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Rio Branco College.[5] He studied for one year at a university in Brussels.[4] He left school after one year of study to devote himself fully to his sport.[4] He told Istoé Gente (a Brazilian magazine) in February 2003 that his mother was disappointed at first with this decision, but now he has no regrets because he has been doing what he loves.[4] At that time, his sponsors (including Visa and Audi) paid for his horses.[4]
Miranda is a four-time Olympic rider and two-time Olympic medalist.[6] His Brazilian team won bronze medals at the 2000 Summer and 1996 Summer Olympic Games. At both the Atlanta and Sydney Games, he rode "Aspen Joter," a stallion who was born in 1985. He partnered himself with "Countdown" (b.1992) for Brazil at the 2004 Summer Olympics,[7][8] and again at the 2008 Summer Olympics.[6] He also participated at the 2003 Pan American Games.[9]
He is a FEI-class, grand-prix level rider. Every year since 1998, he has competed in the FEI World Equestrian Games.[6]
In June 2009, Miranda ranked #2 in the Monte Carlo grand prix of the Global Champions Tour. He ranked 18th, with 32 points, leading into the GCT final in Doha, Qatar in November 2009. His performance in Doha (November 11–14, 2009) was unremarkable at first, but he gained third place in the final, an event with a purse of €300,000.[10]
In November 2009, Miranda (on AD Picolien Zeldenrust) was the third place winner of the Global Champions Tour final in Doha. He actually had the fastest time, but his penalty placed him behind Michel Robert (first place) and Jos Lansink (second place).
In December 2009, Miranda (riding AD Peanuts) won the Salon du Cheval – Ceneca Trophy at the Gucci Masters in Villepinte, just north of Paris.
With his wife, Athina Onassis Miranda, he owns the AD Sport Horses company, which breeds and trains horses and is based at Haras de Ligny, the compound owned by the father-son team of Nelson and Rodrigo Pessoa in Fleurus, Belgium.[11] In December 2009, at the Gucci Masters, Miranda confirmed that the company is moving to his and his wife's new property in the Netherlands early in 2010.
List of Horses
He married firstly Cibele Dorsa,[12] a fashion model, by whom he has a daughter, Viviane, who was born on the first of January 2000.[4]
In December 2005, he married secondly Athina Onassis Roussel, who legally changed her name the following year to Athina Onassis Miranda. Miranda's longtime friend and fellow jumping rider Rodrigo Pessoa served as the best man at the wedding.[13]
His first wife, Cibele Dorsa, committed suicide on March 26, 2011, at the age of 37. Her suicide note publication in Brazil's gossip magazine Caras was forbidden by Miranda's attorneys due to mentions relating him to Dorsa's suicide.
He has a son called Fernando Dorsa Olivia