David Shoobridge

David Shoobridge is an elite Australian dressage rider, trainer and coach. His experience competing at the top levels of Australian dressage and his reputation for successfully developing dressage horses and riders, coupled with his acute eye for detail and his highly articulate and charismatic style means that David is in high demand as a trainer and coach.
David grew up as part of a multi-generational farming and agriculture family in Tasmania. While David and his young family are now based in Victoria, the Shoobridge family property, with its generations of history and sense of continuity is a place he treasures and returns to whenever possible.

David’s early riding experiences were on farm horses, learning by trial and error and not taking anything seriously. He was known for riding anything that was even remotely rideable and this soon progressed to jumping anything that was remotely jumpable.

Dressage was definitely not part of the plan at this stage. Hunter trials, with the combination of show jumping and cross country and no dressage at all were David’s ideal event. In fact, at this point, he simply couldn’t fathom how anyone could remember where to go in a Dressage test for a whole five minutes – or why they would even want to!

His first competition horse was well suited to this until David, at the age of 14 decided he needed some professional guidance and enrolled in his first clinic with a professional coach. The horse, who had worked so well at home, simply refused to load onto the float.

Displaying even then what would become known as his characteristic determination and tenacity, David rode 18km to the clinic followed all the way by his mother in the car towing the float. Not surprisingly, part of that first clinic was a comprehensive lesson on float loading and David credits this experience as one of the biggest influences in his belief that respect between horse and rider starts on the ground.

David gravitated toward dressage as his specialist discipline, developing and campaigning a number of horses successfully until he hit the limelight with the imported stallion, OO Seven, in 2012. Purchased from the horse’s breeder, Isabel Van Gisbergen, David’s first sight of OO Seven was when he picked him up from quarantine. From this unconventional start, they went on to form one of the most successful partnerships in recent Australian dressage.

In 2012, David achieved FEI World Ranking Top 100; in 2013 his FEI world ranking climbed to number 85. This placed him ahead of all other Australian based combinations and established him as the second most successful Australian rider worldwide at that time.

A highlight of David’s time with 00 Seven was achieved at Dressage with the Stars where they recorded one of the highest Grand Prix Freestyle scores in the history of the competition with a commanding 73.5%.
Intro courtesy of David Shoobridge's website.