Photo by Anush Gorak via Pexels
Photo by Anush Gorak via Pexels
Art by Noemi via Copilot
Name: Jean-Luc Dubois
Age: 30
Discipline: Dressage
Breeds: Knabstrupper
Level: S
Competed successfully across national and international circuits, earning recognition for his technical precision and creative flair.
Applauded for his piaffe and passage work, where his Knabstrupper’s natural rhythm shines brightest.
Building a reputation as a rider who blends tradition with innovation, elevating dressage into a performance art.
Advocate for rare and heritage breeds, championing the Knabstrupper’s versatility in modern sport.
Passionate about equestrian storytelling, often presenting his horses with mythic or cinematic names to captivate audiences.
Dedicated to training methods that emphasize patience, trust, and partnership, believing that true dressage is as much about connection as competition.
If you want a horse that moves like poetry and a trainer who lives like a character in a gritty French film, you brace yourself and dial Jean-Luc Dubois.
The Colorstride team risked life and limb (and a perfectly good pair of designer breeches) to visit his facility—a perpetually muddy barn with a broken roof where the only thing consistently polished are the hooves of his champion horses.
Jean-Luc, a former French team rider, is the definition of the unpredictable genius. His methods are utterly chaotic, blending moments of pure brilliance with episodes of complete lunacy. He teaches using feeling and instinct, not diagrams or training scales, often shouting commands that defy translation: "Le Vitesse!" (The Speed!) or "Donnez-moi le feu!" (Give me the fire!). He is known to swing from hysterically funny to terrifyingly angry in the time it takes for a horse to chew the bit.
His students—a hardy, slightly shell-shocked lot—endure his rants because they know his results speak for themselves. The chaos breeds champions.
The Colorstride Insider Tip: Jean-Luc insists on using only ancient, patched saddles that he claims are "ridden in by the gods," and he only accepts payment in cash, or sometimes, bottles of exceptionally good red wine. The most verifiable rumor is that he talks to his horses in fluent, rapid-fire French, and, disturbingly, they seem to understand every word. He once traded a high-potential youngster for a motorcycle and a particularly aromatic wheel of Roquefort cheese—a move he defended as "a matter of balance." For Jean-Luc, the horse is an artist, and he is merely the volatile, chain-smoking curator.