Brett Parbery
Training & Horsemanship
Brett Parbery was born to ride, growing up in a family of devoted horse people in Dorrigo, NSW. His father professionally broke in and trained horses, with a focus on the cattle horse sports of campdrafting and cutting. From a young age Brett was involved in stable life helping his father ride and train the horses before and after school.
Weekends were spent competing at everything from campdrafting, polocrosse, pony club and showing, including at various local agricultural shows and the major royal shows. Brett’s love of Rodeo was sparked and he rode saddle broncs nationally and internationally from 1989 to 2000, becoming one of the Australia’s regular top 20 bronc riders.
However, the love of training horses was still deep inside and two years before finishing his Rodeo career, he decided the world of Dressage would be his next challenge. Brett decided if he wanted to be one of the best, he had to learn from the best so at the end of 2000, he moved to Europe. “I spent three years in Europe working for a number of the top trainers before returning home in 2003 and starting his own dressage stable.
Brett has made regular trips back to Europe to continue training and building relationships with the worlds best. Regular 3 and 6 month stints through until 2016, have been part of annual planning for the Parbery stable as each Grand Prix horse is bought to the world stage.
Brett has now been professionally riding, training and coaching dressage since 2000, with the pinnacle of his achievements being at the World Equestrian Games in 2010. Brett topped off an outstanding European competition season where he finished 10th in the World Cup Final, 6th at Aachen CHIO, 3rd at Rotterdam CHIO and winning the Grand Prix Special at Hickstead. Brett with his top horse Victory Salute, a home bred Australian horse bred and owned by Carolyn Lieutenant completed the 2010 season with an 8th place finish at the best World Games of all time at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky.
Some of Brett’s other achievements include winning over 30 individual Australian Championships across all levels including 4 x Australian Grand Prix Champion. Brett has represented Australia on 2 occasions at the World Games in Kentucky and Tryon 2018. In 2008 and 2016 Brett earned a spot in the final 5 for selection to those respective Olympics, with misfortune on each occasion denying the opportunity. At the London Olympics, Brett was on staff as the Dressage Coach to the Australian Eventing Team and after dressage had the team well positioned in 1st place over all 5 team scores.
He is now devoting his efforts towards the production of young horses through to Grand Prix and has curated his own rider and horse-friendly system that he teaches under the Performance Riders umbrella.
