Dirk with Alex Townsend of Wallaby Hill Farm who facilitated his trip to Australia
Dirk Schrade has just completed his first trip to Australia. During his time here he has been busy giving clinics in various venues including Wallaby Hill, at the Australian International 3 Day Event in Adelaide and at Equitana in Melbourne. He’s met a baby kangaroo, nearly fallen off a horse in Exhibition Eventing, imparted some valuable advice and taught at a clinic overlooking Sydney Harbour so when the chance came to found out more about this successful rider, we jumped at it (or rather we jumped into a noisy stable)
The 36 year old eventing rider has had a big year, adding a team gold medal at the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games to that of his London 2012 Olympic Games team gold in an experience he describes as ‘good and bad’. This German rider, who began riding at the age of eight at his local riding school in the south of Germany, first competed internationally in 1997 at the European Young Rider Championships on Macintosh, his first real eventing horse. After the standard military service at the Sports School of the German Armed Forces in Warendorf he undertook two years of training as a banker but, realising that working in a bank was not what he really wanted to do, he decided to pursue a career as a professional event rider. He went back to Warendorf, did a trainee and master certificate in horse riding and in 2009 he took the opportunity to rent his own facilities and start his own business. Today he runs an international eventing yard with about 30 horses where AEL blogger Diaki Chujo recently spent some time working with Dirk
At Equitana in Melbourne we took the chance to chat to Dirk to find out more about his daily routine, his thoughts on indoor eventing, his experience in Normandy and look forward to 2015. After a busy but enjoyable schedule, he is now ‘looking forward to going home and seeing my horses again’
Please excuse the background noise but it was a pleasure to talk with Dirk despite the strange environment!
