Zonik Plus, Justin Verboomen's Barefoot Ballet Dancer

Dressage

Belgium

Belgian sensation Justin Verboomen's Zonik Plus, the black stallion which captured double gold at the 2025 European Dressage Championships, performed his ballet dance in Crozet barefoot.

So Few Go Barefoot

At the 2009 Global Dressage Forum in Hoge Mierde, Rob Renirie, one of the world's most renowned farriers, told the gathered audience of elite dressage athletes, experts and stakeholders that going barefoot is the best and natural way to keep your horses.

At the Forum Renirie was quoted saying, "The best way for a horse to go is barefoot! If your horses do not have problematic hooves or do not change surface too much (...) you should keep them barefoot." Rob became a farrier to solve a hoof problem with one of his own horses and admitted he keeps his own horses barefoot. A year later at the 2010 GDF, Renirie repeated his message: ""You see rock 'n roll shoes on the market but they influence the movement. Soles, fillers, wedges: NO," he shouted. "Go back to basic."" He concluded his statement with, "what is best for the horse is barefoot. They have the most grip."

Still to this date, hardly any top level dressage horses are performing barefoot in the arena, while the Swedish jumping team and its "king," Hendrik von Eckermann, has been collecting gold medals non-stop on barefoot show jumpers.

Zonik Plus, the Barefoot Ballet Dancer

There is a deeply engrained misconception that shoes make a dressage more fancily, seemingly disregarding the fact that training influences the movement mechanism more than nailing iron under a horse's hoof. The proof in the pudding is in the eating and Justin Verboomen danced to double gold on his barefoot stallion Zonik Plus (by Zonik x Hohenstein).

Zonik Plus' hooves at the trot up in Crozet

Eurodressage asked Justin what prompted him to keep his horse barefoot.

"At the 2023 Belgian Championships (in Gesves), when he was 7, he took off one shoe three times during the competition," Justin reminisced. "There were so many horses everywhere and he was not quiet in the stable."

Verboomen returned home with the 7-year old title, but with a horse whose hooves were in bad shape.

"So right after I decided to take the shoes off and let the hooves grow again," he said. "At the beginning, of course, it was difficult for him and it took two to three months to recover." Justin had no immediate show plans over the winter, so his horse had plenty of time to adapt his feet to a barefoot life. "I was riding him with plastic sandals," Justin said with a smile about the transition period.

The Advantages

Justin is now a firm believer that keeping Zonik Plus barefoot was the best decision... with a financial bonus to boot.

"I have noticed that the legs are better, never swollen," he explained. Furthermore he admitted he was feeling "so much more comfortable to put him in the paddock without any protection," jokingly adding that it's "less expensive."

When asked if Justin keeps all his horse barefoot, he replied no. "Some horses are barefoot and some not. It really depends and each case is different of course," he stated.