He was a successful international show jumping equestrian in the 1960s and 1970s at individual and team events in Olympic Games and European Championships.

Werner Schockemöhle, his youngest brother, was a well-known horse breeder in Oldenburg.

Schockemöhle was involved in horses from an early age, and sold his grey mare Anaconda to the American equestrian Mary Mairs for DM100,000.

At the 1976 Summer Olympics, he won both gold in the individual and a silver medal with the German team which he was part of with his brother.

By his first wife, Gaby, who later married Hendrik Snoek, he had a daughter, Alexandra,[5] and two sons, Christoph, who lives in Singapore, and Frank, who is a manager in the German Bundesliga; and two daughters, Vanessa and Christina, by his second wife, Rita Schockemöhle.