Justin Verboomen

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Justin Verboomen is a Belgian dressage rider best known for his exceptional partnership with his own black stallion Zonik Plus. In August 2025, Justin made history by winning Belgium’s first-ever senior championship dressage medals – double gold in the grand prix special and freestyle at the European Dressage Championships in Crozet, France.

Justin was born in 1987 and grew up in a horse-focused family – his father was a riding instructor, and he was in the saddle from the age of four. A three-year-old pony, gifted to Justin and his twin sister Clarisse, turned out to be too sharp for the jumping arena, which pushed Justin towards dressage almost by default.

By 12, he was spending much of his free time at the Lusitano breeding operation of Léopold Gombeer, the former director of the Académie belge d’équitation, where he would end up staying for around 10 years.

After a brief and unconvincing detour through university (first veterinary science, then economics), Justin committed to riding full-time. The Gombeer years took him regularly to Portugal, where he competed in the Masters du Cheval Ibérique – Europe’s only dressage league specifically for Iberian horses. He later based his own operation from Ecurie B in Wauthier-Braine near Brussels, keeping a string of around 15 horses alongside his sister Clarisse.

The partnership that changed everything came from a chance encounter at a Portuguese restaurant, where breeder Vasco Francisco Freire offered to show Justin a two-and-a-half-year-old stallion. That horse – Zonik Plus, by Glock’s Zonik out of Heideblume (by Hohenstein 4) – would become one of the defining horses of the modern dressage era.

Justin bought him on the spot, and their early progress together saw Zonik Plus take Belgian champion titles at five-, six- and seven-year-old level between 2021 and 2023, along with sixth place at the 2022 WBFSH World Breeding Championships for Young Horses at Ermelo.

When Zonik Plus was six, Justin came close to having to sell him for financial reasons, before a timely intervention from the previous yard owner. He has since declared the horse is not for sale at any price. Unusually for a horse at the top level, Zonik Plus competes without shoes – a decision Justin took in 2023 after a series of pulled shoes at the Belgian Championships.

Justin and Zonik Plus made their international grand prix debut at Kronberg in November 2024 (CDI3*), where they finished third in the grand prix and won the grand prix special. Their World Cup debut followed in December 2024 at Mechelen, where they won the grand prix on their first-ever outing on the circuit. Wins at Lier (CDI4*) followed in March 2025, along with strong placings at the Dutch Masters in ’s-Hertogenbosch. At CHIO Aachen in July 2025, Justin and Zonik Plus won both the grand prix special and freestyle – a career-defining result that preceded their European Championship triumph at Crozet a month later.

The partnership has continued to set personal bests through the 2025/26 season, including wins on the World Cup Western European League circuit. In November 2025, Justin was named the FEI Best Athlete for 2025 – the first Belgian rider to win the honour.

Away from the competition arena, Justin lives in Nivelles with his husband Jonathan and cites Carl Hester as his longest-standing inspiration as both rider and teacher.