00:02
Kenneth Vinther
I chose Asger Jorn's Written in Sand, a painting that really speaks to me.

00:09
Kenneth Vinther
The colors, the composition of the colors, it's like you're looking at maybe a marketplace. Lots of people, lots of life, lots of love. I can see a shape of a human, I can see a shape of an animal. I see some eyes. I see chaos. Yet, it's abstract. It's like a blurred vision of life.

00:33
Kenneth Vinther
I like abstract over classical painting. When you look at a house painted on a canvas, that house is the same house every day you look at it. When you look at abstract work, every day you see something different, you see something new. You change your thought of what the artist wanted to do or show. And every day is a different day when you look at the painting.

00:57
Kenneth Vinther
This painting here, I would love to be able to have it on my wall, wake up every day, and look at it.

01:11
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My name is Tina Jøhnk Christensen, and I'm the host of Danish Originals, a podcast series created in partnership with the American Friends of the National Gallery of Denmark and the National Gallery of Denmark. Our goal is to celebrate Danish creatives who have made a significant mark in the US.

01:29
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Today, our guest is Kenneth Vinther, a Danish artist, professional horse trainer, rider, and entrepreneur. Welcome, Kenneth.

01:38
Kenneth Vinther
Thank you Tina, And thank you for coming.

01:41
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yes, because we are actually in your house. You are the one welcoming us to your home turf. Where in the world are we, Kenneth, and which part of California? Maybe you can describe it to the listeners.

01:54
Kenneth Vinther
Yes, absolutely. We are in a little town called Newbury Park, which is basically a part of Thousand Oaks, which is just north of Los Angeles in Southern California, and my wife and I have lived here for about five years. We have a little house here. Very green, relaxed, with lots of nature around. Suburban, I would say.

02:17
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You wear many different professional hats. One is as an artist. You started painting very young with your father back in Hobro in Denmark. At which point in your life did you discover art? How old were you and how did you discover it?

02:32
Kenneth Vinther
I started when I was a young teenager. My dad was already painting, and then I slowly got into it and it became a very nice tool to express yourself or release some thoughts, and things like that. We started doing some courses together. And then slowly but surely, I fell in love with it.

02:55
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What was it about painting, or is it about painting, that stayed with you from back then till now when you are in your 50s?

03:03
Kenneth Vinther
I'm not the best communicator, you can ask my wife. So one way is my paintings. I do abstract impressionism. When you get into the zone, if I can say it like that, it is something that just comes from within yourself and you can't really explain what and why, but it just somehow comes out on the canvas, and it's a therapeutically great tool. So that's, for me, very important.

03:31
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Your paintings are abstract and very colorful. How would you describe your style?

03:37
Kenneth Vinther
Yeah, I'm a little bit scatterbrained in many ways, and it comes out in my art too. I like to try different techniques, different approaches. The overall is for sure abstract, colorful. The horses have affected my art as well in regards to the flow in my paintings, which I initially didn't really realize myself.

04:03
Kenneth Vinther
I did an exhibition here last year, and it came up again and again from people that came to see the exhibition, that they could see the relationship between my horses and the composition of my paintings.

04:15
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
The exhibition was titled "Mirror." What is it like for you to show your art to an audience and have them comment on it and share the experience with you?

04:28
Kenneth Vinther
It was initially very scary. I have been painting on and off throughout my life, and I'd always been afraid of showing my art to people. And then a few years ago, after a health scare, I really got back into art again. And in the beginning I was a little bit worried about showing it because you get judged and you don't want to hear bad things about what you put out there.

04:53
Kenneth Vinther
But then I decided I had to do it anyway, and then eventually, it really feels good regardless. And the nice thing is that even when people, maybe it's not their taste, they still are very positive about the work I've done.

05:09
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Has your father been able to follow your development artistically?

05:14
Kenneth Vinther
Unfortunately no. He passed a few years ago, before I really started doing it again, so he did not. But I'm sure he would be happy to see it now. He liked to paint landscapes. He liked to paint houses, etc. I was the opposite. I was all about abstracts.

05:33
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Are you an arts fan yourself in general? Do you seek out exhibitions, art museums?

05:40
Kenneth Vinther
I do. I love it. The nice thing about living close to LA is that the LA art scene is going crazy right now. The last few years we have had some mega galleries open, plus tons of smaller galleries, independent artists. So there's always something going on. I go to LA just to hit up different galleries to see different artists, what's out there. Sometimes there's an opening. It's a lot of fun to go and see other artists. The artist community is quite interesting in many ways.

06:14
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are based in Southern California, we established that. I know that you moved here from Germany. Please tell our listeners the romantic story of how your adventures in the US started.

06:28
Kenneth Vinther
Growing up in Denmark, initially I was riding horses for fun as a kid. I ended up doing service in the Danish military as a Gardehusar. I was lucky to get in there and spend a year doing that. And after that, I decided that I definitely wanted to do horses. My dad was a little bit not in agreement with that.

06:49
Kenneth Vinther
And in Denmark, to become a professional horse trainer, you have to do an education where you train and go to school at the same time. So I did that. And then I went to Germany as a professional rider and worked there for a couple of years. And there I met this beautiful blonde girl that was from California.

07:10
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And blue eyes, of course.

07:13
Kenneth Vinther
She was actually blue-eyed, blonde, the classical California picture girl there. And we fell in love. And at one point we had to decide, are we going to Denmark or are we going to Southern California? And I was in my 20s. So, Southern California sounded nice.

07:29
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Where in Germany did you meet this California girl?

07:34
Kenneth Vinther
We were in a town called Elmshorn, which is just north of Hamburg, northern Germany, which was the main place for something called the Holsteiner Federation, which is the breed in that region, and that was the main place where they had the stallions.

07:54
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
When you finally came to California, was it welcoming to you? Did you fall in love with the state or did the love grow over time? What was it like?

08:03
Kenneth Vinther
It was very impressive. I came from Germany, the German culture, the working culture. And then you come to sunny California, blue sky every day, nice weather. And at the time Orange County was before it was really developed. So we still had all the orange groves.

08:24
Kenneth Vinther
And I still remember to this day, that we would drive from the house to the stables and we had to pass these orange groves, and you would roll the windows down and you could smell the oranges. And that was a vivid memory I still have. And it was wonderful, and I was young.

08:42
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So how did you settle in? Talk about the experience of having your suitcases here and settling in. What was it like?

08:50
Kenneth Vinther
It was interesting. I literally came with two suitcases — not even suitcases, it was sports bags with some clothing. And we stayed with my ex-wife's parents in the beginning. And then we started a training business and we rented a little apartment and then we rented a bigger apartment and eventually we were able to purchase a house and training out of a facility down in Orange County.

09:16
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
We will return to the horses, of course. But I know that you were also an actor at one point, and you had a role in a movie that was very popular and that had Johnny Depp in it as the leading man. How did you end up in movies?

09:33
Kenneth Vinther
That's a funny story too. This is LA. Everybody has to try it out eventually at some point. We were in the mall at one point, my ex-wife and I, and this lady approached me and said, you should be an actor. I was like, huh? Long story short, she was running an acting school. We talked a little bit about it and then decided, okay, let's try it. I had different classes, and I really liked it.

09:58
Kenneth Vinther
I was able to get an agent. He sent me out on various auditions. And I landed a couple of different small things, one of the first ones as an extra on Pirates of the Caribbean, the first one that Disney did. And it turned into a really cool thing. They kept 12 of us to keep working on the movie. We got good credits for SAG and all that stuff there.

10:23
Kenneth Vinther
And it was a fun project. It was the first time that Disney ventured into something, we can say, darker. And of course they had Johnny Depp, who was a superstar. And it was a huge budget. There were some interesting things. They did film, but then they converted it electronically right on the set so the director could see the cuts right away. That was new at the time. It was a great experience. I still have friends that I worked with on that set today.

10:55
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I know that the Pirates movies were shot in great locations. What was being on the set of this film like? It was a huge production but also fabulous locations.

11:07
Kenneth Vinther
It was fun. We shot, in the parts I was involved with — it was the old Marineland on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, which is where this big resort is now. And they built the fort that you see right there, a full size fort. But then the other part, which was the more fun part, was shot in the Long Beach harbor, and they built a full size ship, the English ship that you see in the movie on a barge.

11:36
Kenneth Vinther
One side was the entire ship and the other side was just open. We were shooting on this barge every day. Everybody got on the barge and then they pulled us out in the middle of the basin in the harbor, and then all the filming was done there. Because it was such small quarters, we were literally hanging out with Johnny Depp right next to you, and Keira Knightley right next to you, and the director, da da da. And me, of course, never done it before, I was all big eyes. So it was very fascinating.

12:11
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
There's a lot of downtime on movie sets. Did you get to chat with Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley, or did you have other good colleagues to have interesting conversations with? Was the environment inspiring?

12:27
Kenneth Vinther
For sure. Everything was inspiring. Just to be able to be behind the scenes and see how a movie of that caliber is created, was mind-blowing. And especially for me, who had absolutely no idea. Johnny Depp, he was a superstar, he was very well protected, so they did not want us to approach, naturally.

12:48
Kenneth Vinther
But Keira was not a big star at the time, so we were hanging out sometimes, chatting a little bit, and all the other English actors were there. It was a great environment and it was fun. That was actually a very fun episode I could tell you about on the movie —

13:04
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yes, of course, anything.

13:06
Kenneth Vinther
So a lot happened on this set. One day we were shooting the scene where Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom were stealing the ship from the English.

13:16
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
They're pirates!

13:17
Kenneth Vinther
Yeah. They attached the smaller ship to the barge with rope. They set the sails. Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom were supposed to run down the ramp, down the small ship, and then cut the ropes, and then the ship would be pulled away.

13:32
Kenneth Vinther
We shot in the fall. And those familiar with the Santa Ana winds know what that is. Those winds come very sudden. They go towards the ocean so it can sometimes get a little hairy with the winds, and it comes very fast.

13:49
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Very hot winds from the desert.

13:52
Kenneth Vinther
So we had everything ready, everybody was ready. We were looking up and we're seeing the wind starting pulling in the sails a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. But the director and the crew were oblivious to what was going on.

14:05
Kenneth Vinther
We could see what was going on, and we were a little bit like, ooh. And sure enough, suddenly the wind just kicked in as Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom were running down to cut the ropes. Mind you, we were actually in the middle of the harbor at the time, so water around us, nothing else. And they run down and Orlando Bloom, he got this ax, the rope is really thick, and he's trying to cut it, trying to cut it. He can't get it cut. He can't get it cut.

14:33
Kenneth Vinther
And then suddenly the wind just kicks up and just rips the whole entire side of the ship off and takes off, because they had the full sail set. Now down below in that little ship we had the crew, but they had no idea what was going on. So it was complete chaos. And we just saw that little boat literally spin from the wind out in the middle of the harbor.

14:58
Kenneth Vinther
One of the ropes snapped, took Johnny Depp, his legs out, and he just fell on the ground and the next minute the ship was out and far away from us. There was complete chaos and panic and everybody was, of course, afraid that Johnny Depp had gotten hurt. Because this is a big budget movie and if the star gets hurt, that's the problem.

15:18
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Ooh.

15:19
Kenneth Vinther
Fortunately, finally the crew got it under control. Everybody got back to the harbor and Johnny came back. He was limping, but he was totally cool about it. I'm good, let's keep going, keep shooting. It ended up well. But a lot of people were very nervous.

15:37
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And the director, I believe, was Gore Verbinski, right?

15:40
Kenneth Vinther
Yes, Gore Verbinski.

15:41
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So he must have been worried at that minute.

15:43
Kenneth Vinther
He was, he was.

15:44
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Is working in Hollywood everything people think it is, or what you saw of Hollywood?

15:50
Kenneth Vinther
There's the bad sides and there's the really cool sides. It's a little bit like, I feel, the art world, in many ways. It's very diverse and colorful and doesn't always make sense, and yet it draws you in. Everybody has a dream. It doesn't matter. You're an artist, you are a horse person, you are an actor. We all had dreams.

16:18
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are no longer acting. Why did you end your acting career?

16:23
Kenneth Vinther
Well, I was married and we needed to pay bills. I took a job on the side, because I had to contribute. Because of that, I had to cancel multiple auditions. And one day my agent, fair enough said, you know what, you're not serious, you're out. And then, I started doing other stuff.

16:48
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
As we talked about before, you're also a professional horseman and a businessman. You have a company called Equisani that you started in 2013. What does your company do?

17:00
Kenneth Vinther
The company manufactures and sells equine supplements and care products that we have developed. I started the company a little bit because of my own horses. I needed some different things for my horses for performance, and I wasn't too happy.

17:19
Kenneth Vinther
I started with one product and we added more products that we've been able to develop together with various companies that either have very sophisticated science or new methods to create things typically outside the horse world.

17:36
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You have horses at a ranch or an equestrian center in Newbury Park. What is it about horses that makes you so attached to them and that you want to be close to them?

17:50
Kenneth Vinther
Oh, it's an addiction.

17:52
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's an addiction?

17:54
Kenneth Vinther
I would say it's an addiction. Once you get bit by it — I tried to stop for a couple of years, 'cause it's not an inexpensive sport to do. It's not. And it takes a lot of time. But it brings so much.

18:08
Kenneth Vinther
I think it comes down to a mental level. When you ride horses, when you work with horses, they are really amazing animals. Extremely sensitive, extremely, extremely intuitive. They can't communicate like we can communicate, so they rely on other forms of communication, something that we have lost, probably thousands of years ago. And when you ride a horse, the connection between horse and rider, it's hard to describe, but it's a point where you're mentally in sync with the horse.

18:48
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What makes you so attached to the horses?

18:51
Kenneth Vinther
Initially, I did a lot of sports, and this sport here, as a sport, is something that never gets old. It is a communication between a horse and a human. A horse can have a bad day, a human can have a bad day. And every day, it's not starting over, but you have to find your tune with the horse. So in that way, it never gets boring.

19:14
Kenneth Vinther
The other part is that I had a very good horse, I still have him. He was on top of his game here a couple of years ago and we did all the big, big money classes, the Grand Prix, they call them. And you think you're on top of the mountain one day, and the next day something happens, and you're just being slapped in the face and almost feel like you have to start over again. And emotionally it's up, down, up, down. And I think most horse people will agree with that.

19:46
Kenneth Vinther
But it's also what makes it fascinating because it doesn't matter how good you are, every day you learn something new, small things. And especially later in my life, I have learned so much about myself through my horses. And they're amazing animals. Going out with them, going on a trail ride with them, I love just being around them. It's healthy.

20:12
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
When did your love for horses start? Do you remember the first time you met a horse, so to speak?

20:19
Kenneth Vinther
Yeah. We grew up in a normal house. We had a riding club down the street, and my two younger sisters were the ones that actually started riding. And I started coming down there. I was more helping with driving a tractor or doing something like that. I was a young teenager. I thought that was fun.

20:37
Kenneth Vinther
And one day someone talked me into trying to sit on a horse. We had what we call a vaulting team in the riding club. Vaulting is acrobatics on a horse that's running around in a circle at a canter. And then you jump up on the back of the horse and you do different acrobatic exercises. And that was actually how I got started before I even sat in a saddle.

21:02
Kenneth Vinther
And I did that competitively for a few years. I was actually at the Danish championships a couple of times. And it was a lot of fun. And then from there, the next thing was to actually try to ride a horse with a saddle. And I loved it from the get go.

21:16
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Do you remember the first horse?

21:19
Kenneth Vinther
Yeah, I do. It was a pony. There was a girl that had this pony, and this pony was really a bad pony, classical bad pony. It kept bucking off. And the mom was frustrated and I was watching it one day and I said, well, I can maybe ride it. And they were like, well, have a go.

21:40
Kenneth Vinther
And I jumped on it and I think because of my vaulting days, my balance and everything was really good. So I got on the pony and started riding and it tried to buck me off. It didn't get me off. And then the mom said, hey, can you keep riding the pony? And I said, sure. So that was my first, what can I say, real ride where I rode this pony for a couple of years and developed myself as a rider. And so that was the start.

22:08
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
When did you realize that you could make a career out of this?

22:12
Kenneth Vinther
My parents could not afford a horse. I was lucky that I kept having people asking me to ride their horses. And at the time, I was just happy to be able to have a horse to ride. I slowly developed my skills and, and I became a good rider at the time. And then of course the next step for me was that I wanted to make a profession out of it, 'cause I really liked the riding part of it.

22:37
Kenneth Vinther
And in Denmark, because they do offer the option of actually getting a professional trainer riding education, I went that way after high school.

22:48
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And just for the listeners, there's a little dog here. So if you hear little footsteps, that's a little cute dog. What's his name?

22:55
Kenneth Vinther
His name is Tiki.

22:57
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Okay. So it's Tiki that you hear if you hear little noises in the background.

23:02
Kenneth Vinther
Yes. He has a hard time sitting still with guests in the house.

23:07
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You have a horse called Colicchio. He is a jumper. How would you describe him?

23:15
Kenneth Vinther
He's a personality. He is a small horse. He is measuring 16.1 hands, which is quite small for a horse. He's a Holsteiner. He used to be a stallion, and now he's not anymore. At the time when I was competing him, he was a stallion.

23:32
Kenneth Vinther
He fell in my lap as a six-year-old, and I didn't really know what to do with him. But he turned into the best horse I ever had, and probably also at the time, one of the best horses on the west coast in the show jumping world. My rider friends, colleagues, they called him ATM, 'cause he was always in the money.

23:55
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That's funny.

23:56
Kenneth Vinther
He paid for himself plus, in the years that I was competing him on the high level. And we did one of the biggest classes, a million dollar class, in Thermal out in the Palm Springs area. I took him to Canada, did some big shows up there and mostly stayed on the West Coast and did big classes up and down the coast.

24:15
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What makes a good jumper, both the rider and the horse?

24:20
Kenneth Vinther
It's a combination, it has to fit. Yes, you have to be a good rider, but the horse is even more important. Because you have decent riders, they get really nice horses and then they have a good time for a year or two until the horse says no.

24:36
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
The horse will say no?

24:37
Kenneth Vinther
They will say no. They will not go. I say it's 50-50. You have to have a good horse, but you have to be able to maintain the horse and keep them fit, keep them healthy, keep them confident and all that stuff.

24:50
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And motivated, it sounds like.

24:51
Kenneth Vinther
And motivated. Because if a horse doesn't want to jump, it's not gonna jump. But a good horse, they have to be athletic, they have to be brave, they have to be sensitive, and they have to be smart. There's really not that big a difference between a human athlete and a horse athlete.

25:13
Kenneth Vinther
You can see on a person when they're good athletes — slender, fast, whatever it is you're looking for in the sport. And it's the same with horses. And show jumping, there are certain qualities that you're looking for, versus, for example, if it was a dressage horse, then there are little different qualities. If it's a race horse, it has completely different qualities. But an athlete is an athlete and when you have a good one, you better go with it.

25:42
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You said that you got him when he was six, so maybe you didn't name him because I was wondering, it's an Italian name. Why this name for the horse?

25:53
Kenneth Vinther
It's a fun story. Actually my ex-wife and I bought him as a foul. Around that time, I was getting out of the training business. I wasn't happy doing the training full-time. So she was riding the horse and getting him ready for whatever she was doing. And then we split up, and he became a part of my, what do you call it, divorce deal, that I took him over.

26:18
Kenneth Vinther
And at the time he was very difficult, borderline dangerous. So it's one of these things like, here, you take him. And I was like, okay. And it took me a year, a good year to just be able to ride him. He would, every day, literally every day, I would get on him, start riding him and he would at one point try his best to get me off his back.

26:42
Kenneth Vinther
And that was his attitude. He was very strong-minded, but then eventually he got tired of that. And then slowly we bonded and built up a stronger and stronger relationship. And then it also turned out that he was an amazing jumper. No one really paid attention to him for a long, long time because he's small, he's very unorthodox, he looks terrible when he cantered around in the ring.

27:10
Kenneth Vinther
He looks like a little pony. And no one really thought anything of him. And it wasn't before we started doing the real classes, money classes, and he suddenly kept jumping clean, winning money that people were just suddenly were like, oh, this is an interesting horse.

27:30
Kenneth Vinther
And I actually did get some really good offers on him, but he was a once-in-a-lifetime horse for a guy like me, so I could not part from him. And I still have him. He's still in the stable.

27:43
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And Colicchio, the name?

27:45
Kenneth Vinther
The name Colicchio happened, because we bought him as a foul, so we could name him, my ex-wife and I. She loved to cook, and Tom Colicchio the chef, she admired him, and we had to give him a name starting with the C, so Colicchio became his name.

28:03
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's a cool name. You do competitions with horses and you train them to become jumpers. What are you the most proud of having achieved in this regard?

28:16
Kenneth Vinther
For sure, Colicchio, no doubt about it. He's a once-in-a-lifetime horse. We were very, very successful. Unfortunately, COVID hit and then after COVID I had some surgery, so we got a little setback there. But when we did well, he was amazing. And I also love to educate young horses. I brought up a lot of young horses over the years, and it's really satisfying to see them move on and do well with other riders too.

28:49
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How many hours a week do you sit on a horse? And how would you describe the experience of connecting with a horse? And do you ever have a sore bum?

29:00
Kenneth Vinther
Well, yes, you can actually get a sore bum, especially with my small little bum. So because of that, I try not to spend too much time sitting in the saddle, if I can say it like that. You can go up in what they call a two-point, where you basically stand up in the stirrups a little bit and you don't have to sit. But I spend at least a couple of hours a day. So what is that? 12 to 14 hours a week in the saddle.

29:32
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
If you were not doing what you're doing professionally, what would your alternative be? Were there any Plan Bs for you?

29:41
Kenneth Vinther
No. That's just how it went with my life. And looking back, would I have done anything different? I don't know. The horses have brought me so much, not just on a personal level. The nice thing about this sport is that you have many different people from any layer in society you can think of. I have met Steven Spielberg. I've met —

30:08
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How did you meet Steven Spielberg?

30:10
Kenneth Vinther
I actually met him because I worked a little bit for a French company, selling saddles. I went to his place here in LA at the time when his daughter was riding, and we were finding a saddle for her, and hanging out and chatting a little bit. It was quite fun actually.

30:28
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
He's a very down-to-earth and nice guy. I can imagine him just being like any sort of cool guy.

30:34
Kenneth Vinther
Oh, totally. Yeah. Yeah. Him and his wife, they were very sweet, they're normal people. It's just when you get to a place like that, and we just meet them at their home, working on, in this case, a saddle for their daughter's horse, that's what it's about. You don't talk about anything else.

30:54
Kenneth Vinther
But yeah, it's a very fascinating world. You have some very, very famous, high roller people in the industry. Kaley Cuoco has a very beautiful ranch and her trainer Tracey and I had been talking, and they asked me to come and help with exercising horses, a couple of years ago now.

31:16
Kenneth Vinther
And I still go there because they have a very beautiful facility where I can go and train with my horses when I need to jump them in a big arena. And they're super sweet. It's one of these things in the horse world, we are just horse people, but outside the horse world, it's different.

31:34
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What are the main differences between equestrian life in Denmark, for instance, Hobro, where you're from, which is a small town in Jutland, and equestrian life in Southern California?

31:49
Kenneth Vinther
It's two different worlds. Funnily enough, Denmark is the country in Europe with the most horses per capita, or used to be the last time I looked. And it's more of an everyday sport. The riding clubs are supported by the government, so everybody has access to the sport. And yes, it's not a cheap sport, of course, you have to have a horse if you want to go further and stuff, but everybody can do it. The horse shows are inexpensive, etc.

32:20
Kenneth Vinther
Now you come to California or the US — this is a different ballgame here because it's extremely expensive. Horse shows are crazy expensive. Horses are more expensive. Training is expensive. Everything that entails a horse, if it's equipment, food, whatever it is, it's more expensive than anything else.

32:43
Kenneth Vinther
So here it's by far a sport for the top earners, no doubt about it. And it's in some ways very good, but also in many ways it's sad, because it's not a sport that an everyday person can often have an option to become a part of. And it's a catch-22 in that way.

33:09
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
An elite sport.

33:10
Kenneth Vinther
100%. And it's become much worse, if I can say, over the last ten years where it's become, when you go to horse shows more and more, wealthy individuals with multiple horses versus one person, one horse.

33:28
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Kenneth, do you ever miss Hobro and do you get sentimental when I say that name?

33:38
Kenneth Vinther
I do. I do. Hobro was a great town to grow up in, and I still have close friends living there. And I still try to go home as much as I can. And when I go home, I always stay with friends, and I always see friends that I went to school with or played with as a kid, etc. But, when I'm there, it's a small town, then I long for California. I do love it here. Despite everything, it's an amazing place to live.

34:09
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It seems you are good at reinventing yourself and exploring different passions. Do you have other passions that you want to pursue?

34:18
Kenneth Vinther
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I have many things I would like to do, if I could. I love to travel. I would love to travel a lot more, explore other continents, other cultures. I was just on a trip to Mexico city visiting a friend down there and I hadn't been there before. Unfortunately here in the States, we don't always see the real scenes behind different countries.

34:49
Kenneth Vinther
Even for me, I think I'm pretty open, and knowledgeable about the world around us, and it was really an eye opener to see how proud they are of their culture. And how strong the culture between the natives and the Spaniards and the mixes in the cultures. And the arts are a big, big, big deal in Mexico City. So I would love to do more stuff like that.

35:15
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are an American citizen, just as I am, and you are also a Danish citizen. So we are both dual citizens. What do you feel you identify as the most? When you travel to Mexico, do you say I'm American, or do you say I'm Danish, or do you say I'm Danish American?

35:34
Kenneth Vinther
That's a good question. I traveled to Mexico as an American. It is more practical. And then when I met the local people, they asked, where do you live? I live in Los Angeles, da da da. And it's like, where are you from? Well, I'm originally from Denmark. And so it always ended up in that way.

35:53
Kenneth Vinther
And so I feel my culture, my upbringing, my values, are Danish, no doubt about it. But then there's the other side, maybe, becoming a business owner and the goals, etc, that's probably more American. And also why I ended here in the first place, I think. It's a mix. And I hope I got the best of both.

36:17
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My final question to you. What do you still want to achieve? What are your professional goals and will all your goals happen here in California or will we meet you somewhere else in the future?

36:30
Kenneth Vinther
My goal is to maintain a nice lifestyle, be successful with my business and maintain my horses. I do have a little dream about being able to maybe buy a little house in Denmark at some point and use it as a summer base, and be able to go back. The older you get, the more you start thinking about certain values in your life, which I never thought about before. So something like that would be great.

37:01
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So, where do you think you would like to rest forever?

37:06
Kenneth Vinther
I think I would like to be cremated and I think I would like to get my ashes spread somewhere off the Pacific coast, because this is my life here and I'd rather be laying out there in the Pacific coast than in the cold Danish —

37:27
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Among the sharks and dolphins.

37:29
Kenneth Vinther
Yeah, that's fine, I'll play with the dolphins. I heard they are fun to play with too, so.

37:34
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Alright, Kenneth, thank you so much for being part of Danish Originals. We really appreciate you being with us in your house.

37:42
Kenneth Vinther
Thank you very much. It was fun.

37:45
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Thank you.

37:48
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
For today's episode, Kenneth Vinther chose Asger Jorn's Skrevet i sand: Alpona or Written in Sand: Alpona from 1971 from the collection of the National Gallery of Art.