David Shoobridge is fully immersed in all that he loves – riding, breeding and teaching – and quietly building on the success of his homebred rising stars. He’s also now looking over his shoulder at the other love of his life, daughter Annabel.

Happily ensconced in his purpose-built property, Salisbury, at Lancefield in Victoria, David Shoobridge isn’t resting on his laurels. He ended 2022 on a high with his homebred stallion Vittorio DS taking out Champion Four-Year-Old Young Horse at the Victorian Dressage Festival last December, and Sicario taking the Five-Year-Old title.

What does this year hold for him? He’s keeping his cards close to his chest, but a follow-up performance at Dressage & Jumping with the Stars is not out of the question. We catch up with David at his beautiful spread in the undulating granite country just north of Melbourne where he has established his business. How he found the property back in 2016 and developed it is a story in itself. Previously based in New South Wales, he found he was doing so much teaching in Victoria it made sense to move. The stunning foothills of the Macedon Ranges ticked the boxes for him because it was close to Melbourne and the airport.

EQ LIFE: Have you built Salisbury from scratch?

DAVID: Yes, I found the block of land. The people who we bought it from had it as their retirement plan. He was a builder and had built a lovely house with great attention to detail – but unfortunately his wife hated the Lancefield winters! That opened the door for me. She managed to win their argument and move back to Melbourne.

I had a list of properties to see and this one was actually the first one on my list. But because it had no infrastructure – it was just a house in a paddock – I didn’t really allow very much time for it because I thought, look, it’s not going to work, I need to be able to move into a property and have functioning facilities. I remember driving down the drive and seeing this cool little house and opening the front door and I just looked and thought, ‘oh, we’ve got a problem!’

So, first property ticked the boxes, other than the infrastructure. Then the sensible me kicked in and said to myself, ‘no, come on, let’s look around at properties that are developed that I can step into straight away’… but I just kept coming back to this one.

EQ LIFE: Do you feel you have completed the Salisbury project now?

DAVID: Well, it’s been an evolving project. When I was first planning the property I actually sat down with a ruler and a big bit of cardboard and had an aerial photo of the property. Then I cut out shapes that I knew I would like. I had in my mind I would love a really good 60×20 metre outdoor and a really nice smaller indoor – purposefully having a smaller indoor for the young horses and when we’re showing the mares and foals. Then I wanted paddocks that were about 20×30 metres, no bigger. And the broodmare paddocks, the young horse paddocks, they’re around 4 acres each.

I cut out all these shapes and worked out where I could fit everything – knowing the lay of the land and the undulation as there are also two creeks through the property. I just started cutting the shapes, sticking them together. I actually found it the other day, I found a photo of it, and I looked and thought it’s not bad! It’s fairly close. There were a few changes, but what I started to do was to build a dream masterplan. Whether that was reality or not, that was only something that the business could answer as it evolved.

Now, with that masterplan and with the business evolving and having the development pace itself, as the business is washing its face, has been really rewarding. So, in short, no it’s not finished, but fundamentally, the property is really, really functional.

EQ LIFE: Many years ago you had an amazing partnership with stallion 00 Seven, which had a large impact on dressage in this country, and we miss the cool freestyles you did together. Has he helped shape your business?

DAVID: The lessons I had from 00 Seven were invaluable. He was just the most incredible horse and an incredibly generous soul. Not only that, but the people that I connected with through him were also wonderful. He helped shape me as a rider as well as a trainer, but also then getting to know his breeder and her breeding philosophy was absolutely wonderful. Her name is Isabel van Gisbergen, and she has bred some wonderful horses, like Voice, 00 Seven, Ambria and heaps that went to international Grand Prix. Just taking the time to listen to people that have so much more experience – people that have the confidence and the tenacity to walk to the beat of their own drum – and really focus on what drives them as breeders and horsemen, and trying to learn as much as I can. Then to evolve my own journey, let my own creativity come into play in terms of our breeding program.

So, 00 Seven was my eye-opener and then when he was getting close to retirement, and after a long discussion with Dutch breeder Emmy de Jeu, I came up with a plan to import Agent de Jeu. Agent is a product of Isabel’s breeding program and he is really closely line-bred to 00 Seven’s mother. So, 00 Seven was by Rubinstein out of a mare called Gelbria. Gelbria was a sister to a mare called Barbria who Tineke Bartels rode for Holland on their Olympic team.

So, you’ve got 00 Seven and Gelbria on the father-line, and then Agent’s mother-line was a mare called Tia Mabria, and she was by Florestan – and this is where it gets interesting – she was also out of Gelbria! So here you have two half-siblings and a male and female from the same mother-line being joined to produce Agent. So, initially I thought this is crazy, that’s just absolutely crazy – and then the more I learnt about the genetics and the influence of mother-lines and pedigrees, it was an incredible learning experience.

EQ LIFE: Would you say your business is split 50/50 breeding and training?

DAVID: I think that the key for my business is vertical integration. Doing everything from importing the semen, or using my own stallions with our mares, producing these foals, foaling them down, growing them up and training them, competing them and then breeding them again. It’s a big lifecycle. There’ll be some times of the year where obviously I am not breeding and not doing as much for the breeding side of the business, and so I can teach more. But at the end of the day, breeding and producing the horses is an absolute passion of mine – as is teaching – and so they just work hand in hand.

EQ LIFE: You have just recently imported another stallion?

DAVID: Yes, it was a little while ago now, but he’s another de Jeu! He’s a 6½-year-old by Toto Jr out of a Negro x Ex Libris mother; Ex Libris was a stallion that came to Australia probably 15 years ago for a few seasons. So it’s really cool to see him pop up in the third line of sires.

Toto Nation is the big baby. I haven’t actually measured him since I imported him and then he was about 17.2 hands. He is a whopper but he is the most gentle, sweet horse and just an absolute pleasure to have around. He’s taking a while to have the strength to put everything together, but he’s showing absolute brilliance in passage work and flying changes. He is super exciting.

EQ LIFE: Is he is now licensed?

DAVID: Correct, with the Hanoverian Society. Both Toto Nation and Vittorio DS have their preliminary licence; they still need to do their performance test through sport as here in Australia there are no structured performance tests like the Europeans have. Toto Nation’s had a couple of seasons of foals now and again I am seeing great things with temperament and style of foals. We’ve got a lot of breeders breeding back to him – and a lot of breeders that will have multiple mares that will breed back to him season after season. If that’s any indication to go by, that’s really rewarding.

EQ LIFE: You have another stallion, Vittorio DS, whom you’ve bred?

DAVID: He is by Vitalis out of an Ampere / Donnerschwee / Sandro Hit mother. So interestingly – I can’t remember the year, but probably in the mid-2000s – we imported a mare by Donnerschwee from Clemens Graf von Merveldt, and at the same time I also imported Ampere semen – and so Amanda and I bred the Ampere mare, Amaretta. Amaretta was the champion Hanoverian mare in her year group. She was a super, super talented mare but then she had a stable accident. She is paddock sound, and absolutely fine, but her gift to me has been through the breeding program rather than as a sport horse. I bred her to Vitalis and that produced Vittorio. So Vittorio is actually second generation of my breeding, third generation that I rode. I rode his grandmother, his mother and now him. So, that’s really, really exciting.

EQ LIFE: Obviously DJWTS is coming up and you had a pretty impressive end to 2022, so I’ve got to ask you, is it a clean sweep that you’re aiming for in March?

DAVID: I’m taking Vittorio, the four-year-old, to Dressage & Jumping with the Stars, and of course it would be amazing to be in the winner’s circle, but my journey with him has already been far greater than a competition, and the plan long-term will be a lot more than the young horse classes. However it goes over the next few months, whatever happens, they’re such baby horses I think there’s such a really high level of unpredictability. All we can do is prepare the best we can and do the best on the day, see where that takes us. But certainly, it’s the most incredible journey.

EQ LIFE: How many horses now do you have in training?

DAVID: I’ve got around seven in work at the moment, and numbers fluctuate with the client horses and my own horses between four and about eight. It’s a struggle to do a huge number and also parent, and with Annabel’s afternoon school sports and her own riding – and also just being present and being available. I really try hard to compress my day into a school day. I’ll feed up in the morning when Annabel’s getting ready for school and then I’ll take her to the school bus, then I’m home by 7:50am, that’s when the day starts and then finishes at 4:20pm when I get her from the bus again.

EQ LIFE: Were there any lessons out of Covid for you?

DAVID: There were a few silver linings. It gave me time to get to know the property really, really well; really understand how the land worked, what I could use where and densities. But it also gave me time to take stock and assess the cost of this sort of operation; not only the financial cost but the operational cost and the opportunity cost and the cost to my family.

Obviously with Amanda’s tragic death and becoming a sole parent, it gave me a massive reset to see that none of us know what’s around the corner. We’ve got to live our best life and work as hard as we can, create absolutely everything we can to basically leave a legacy, leave a positive footprint, but also to be available, be available to our kids and family and take the time. I pulled back a fair bit from travelling for clinics. It gave me a chance to reboot and to say this is how I want our life to look and step back from the public side of the horse world, and just be present at home and with my family.

Also tied into that was the very real factor that my home here, Salisbury, is first and foremost my home but it’s also my workplace. We would often have clients turning up seven days a week, early in the morning, late at night, and the Covid lockdown gave me a bit of a chance to say ‘hey, we have to create our own sanctuary’. We need to have an effective business model but also a really effective family model. It was a good lesson for me to learn to adopt a slightly more sustainable work/life balance. It’s been something that’s evolved and I think is really positive.

EQ LIFE: Beautifully said, David, because it is very much a family affair with your father, and with Annabel achieving so much with her riding. Does your dad live on the property?

DAVID: Dad commutes between our farm in Tassie. We’ve got an old family farm. We grow hops – my family brought hops to Tassie back in the early 1800s – and we grow poppies and other crops. Dad spends most of his time up here. The plan was to do sort of 50/50 the Derwent Valley and Salisbury, but it falls very strongly in our favour – which I love but I don’t think my brother Bob appreciates!

Dad potters around and gets a heap done here. As any good farmer knows, retirement is never an option! He has an evolving sense of horse responsibility; he will quite happily putt-putt-putt on the tractor right past the indoor, maybe with a round bale of hay four metres in the air if someone’s riding a spooky horse… completely oblivious to the risks! But that’s okay… (laughs)

EQ LIFE: The big question… is Annabel allowed to ride any of your horses? She’s a good rider now, so watch out!

DAVID: She is. She actually just had her first Medium at the weekend at the Interschools. She won both her tests. I had to remind her that when I was 13 I was hooning around our farm in Tassie on a thoroughbred and a quarter horse/thoroughbred cross, jumping fences and fallen-down trees and had so little structure for my riding. I said, ‘here you are doing a Medium level test’, and it’s really, really special. She loves having a ride on Toto Nation – we call him Lio – she loves having a ride on Lio and she’s also ridden Vittorio. I don’t want her to ride him too often because she could very easily become a bit too comfortable!

Let’s just say the succession plan is there. If I hang up the spurs one day, I can sit back and point the finger and say, ‘right, on this one, off we go!’ She loves it and it’s really special to see those moments as well. And certainly the moments she has with Noble Dancer, given he was her Mum’s pride and joy pony, to see him taking shape and the partnership those two have is truly wonderful.

EQ LIFE: And obviously she has a good coach?

DAVID: Oh, she has a few coaches (laughs). I remember a few years ago she said ‘I need a proper instructor. Can I get my own instructor?’ And I said, ‘you sure can’. So it’s a bit of a team effort. We’ve got a friend of ours, Claire Thomas helps her, and then my partner, Holly Stansfield-Smith, helps her and I help her. I’d like to say I help her the most… I’d like to take a little bit of credit, but it’s not my credit to take. It’s Annabel’s hard work and she’s doing a super job.

EQ LIFE: As always, beautifully said, David. You should be just so thrilled about what you’ve achieved, particularly in the last six years, post, should I say, 00 Seven!

DAVID: Thanks Sunday, it’s been a journey of a lot of learning, a lot of experiences, and then just owning it and evolving. I think especially the next chapter with Vittorio is so special, being the owner-breeder-rider. And now he is standing at stud so we are seeing another generation in utero. His first foals are due next season. I can’t wait! That’s the plan, I’ve been trying to breed a filly full sister. The mare just keeps throwing out colts! I’ve had four full brothers – Vittorio 1, Vittorio 2, Vittorio 3, Vittorio 4! I was really hoping for a Vittoria. It’s okay, we’re going to try a different stallion because this combo is very, very blue.

EQ LIFE: Hopefully you get a filly!

DAVID: Fingers cross, fingers crossed!

The next chapter of the business is evolving to produce some exceptional foals. It’s so incredibly exciting. We are using a combination of frozen semen along with Toto Nation and Vittorio on our band of broodmares who are by stallions such as D’Avie, Don Schufro, Johnson, Totilas, Foundation, Secret, Ampere, Ibiza and more. Designing these pregnancies, their genetic components along with matching types, drives me to spend the time and delve into depths of research. Once the mares are in foal… we wait. It’s a long 11 months! EQ

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